


How A Baby Is Made

by Itsprobablyme



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, F/M, Femdom, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt/Comfort, Male-Female Friendship, Naked Male Clothed Female, Parenthood, Protective Natasha Romanov, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Rape: Female on Male, Secret Avengers - Freeform, Sex Slavery, Slavery, Torture, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2019-06-14 04:49:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 34,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15381003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Itsprobablyme/pseuds/Itsprobablyme
Summary: Who would suggest that Captain America would commit a kidnapping? Who would imagine him to father an illegitimate child? And who would believe that Madam Hydra, of all people, would be the mother?





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> It started as a "porn with a plot" that suddemly became a dark adventure story with some sex scenes. Hope you enjoy it.

“Push!”

“Fuck off, bitch! A-ah-ah-ah! I'll kill you. I'll kill you… I'll kill…”

It was not the first time for midwife Gene Davis to perform delivery in prison. Though she has never been to the floating Raft casemate, but childbirth is childbirth everywhere, and criminals everywhere are criminals, «I'll kill you» and «fuck off, bitch» were the words she used to hear. Sometimes even decent housewives, doctors of sciences and one time a British aristocrat expressed themselves with the words any dock worker could be ashamed of when labors were in progress. Gene Davis was twice a mother herself, so she knew perfectly well: when the baby squeezes through the vagina, pushing the pelvic bones apart, it's very difficult to control yourself. However, she managed to do it. She was proud of her composure. For twenty-three years of midwife practice and fourteen years of work in the prison system, no one has succeeded in getting her out of herself.

“Mind your breath, darling,” midwife said, when the patient's spasm was over and she leaned back in her birthing chair, panting, covered with sweat. “The head is almost there. Another push and your baby will see this big world.”

”I'll kill you…” whispered the woman in the birth chair. Davis did not respond. This woman, she knew, will most likely never leave the prison walls. Terrorism, trafficking, drug dealing, bribery of officials, murder, kidnapping, torture — the record of Ophelia Sarkissian’s crimes was so long that Davis had no doubt that this child would learn to speak before the judicial process of the mother would be over.

Davis saw the signs with an experienced eye before they were felt by the mother.

“A deep breath,” she commanded. “And now, dig your heels and push hard!”

Ophelia Sarkissian’s tall body strained, she pressed her chin to her sternum and growled gruffly. The wet head of the baby parted the labia, the wrinkled, cyanotic face appeared outward.

“I… kill…” Sarkisisan moaned.

“Hardly, dear,” Davis said quietly. “Breathe. The head is already born. Once more, the last effort.”

With a guttural yell, the woman in labor strained again, and the baby splashed into Davis' rubber-gloved palms. Sarkissian leaned back against the bed. The greenish-black locks of hair that clung to her face were unpleasantly reminiscent of snakes.

Shake, slap, suck water and mucus out of the respiratory tract — and the baby emitted her first cry. The assistant cut the umbilical cord. Having the girl wiped, Davis put her on the scales. Wow, ten pounds! She's a big girl. Grasping reflex, pupillary reflex, knee-jerk reflex, sucking reflex, skin color, perfectly developed lungs — all as it should be, ten out of ten on the Apgar scale.

“She is a beauty,” Davis said. She always said that to mothers, but this time she was totally sincere.

The assistant began to process the navel, and Davis attended again to the mother. Vagina had slightly cracked down to the anus, letting the child out. Two or three stitches were needed.

“Now the placenta be born and I'll stitch you,” the midwife said. “Would you like to have a drink?”

“Yes… please,” Sarkissian croaked. Davis gave her a sachet of juice. After a few sips, the woman put it aside and quietly, even timidly, asked:

“Can I… hold her?”

“Yes, of course." Davis took the girl from the assistant's hands and laid her on her mother’s chest. "You can feed her if she wants.”

…The production of oxytocin will conduce to the separation of the placenta, she did not add.

The baby sucked at her mother's breast. In such moments, something human awoke even in the most hardened bandits, murderers, madams of whorehouses… Sarkissian was no exception. Her angular, knifelike face softened, brightened.

“Hello, Mina!” she sang. “It's me, your Mom. We'll get out of here, girl. We surely do”.

Not in this life, Davis thought. That is, the baby, of course, will get out. Two or three formalities and Davis will take her to the continent, to the clinic, where a foster family will pick her up. Sarkissian will appear before the court, and, most likely, sentenced to several lifelong terms.

The placenta safely separated. Another push, rather soft this time, and it came out. Davis tended to the crack, took off her gloves, rinsed her hands and took up the documentation.

“What is the name of the girl?” she asked. Foster parents would change a name if they want, but until then the girl must be called somehow in documents.

“Wilhelmina,” cooed Sarkissian. The midwife nodded.

“Father's name?”

Sarkissian looked directly at her, and Madonna's smile on her face turned into a witch's grin.

“It does not matter.”

Davis shrugged. It did not really matter. Surely one of the bandits. “John Doe,” she wrote in the column “Father”, then closed the tablet and gave it to the assistant, then held out her hands to the baby.

“No!” Sarkissian clung to the sniffing bundle of towels. “You cannot take her away from me. Don’t you dare…”

Davis shrugged and stepped back. This, too, was not the first time in her memory.

Two hefty female guards stepped forward. A little fuss and some screams, a click of handcuffs — and the midwife took the girl from the guard’s hands.

“Inject her with sedative,” Davis advised to the jail doctor. “She needs a rest.”

Sarkissian's shrieks faded as soon as the door closed behind Davis and her assistant. The Raft was excellently soundproof.

The helicopter took them to the JF Kennedy Airport, where the hospital minivan was already waiting. While the birth lasted, it had got dark. A spatter of rain fell from the sky. Christmas Eve was at the doorway, but there was still too worm for the snow.

At the junction near the Marine Park, the van stopped abruptly.

“Hey, easy!” Davis shouted to the driver: she could hardly hold the baby in her hands. The driver did not answer. Instead, shots rang out.

Davis rushed to the floor, under the seats, protecting the baby with her body. Young Minnie was yelling at the full power of her perfectly developed lungs. Short machinegun staccatos changed with screams in unfamiliar languages and the roar of a motorcycle. The assistant lying next to Davis wetted herself. At last, everything went quiet.

The door opened — or rather, someone ripped it off the hinges. A man's head and broad shoulders squeezed into the opening. Sweetish-metallic smell of gunpowder creeped into with him. The assistant squealed.

“Ma'am, it's all right,” the man said. The street lamp shone directly into his back, so his face was hard to see. “These people will not disturb you or anyone else anymore.”

He had a pleasant voice, surprisingly tranquil for a man fresh from the shootout. And, for some reason, this tranquility sent shivers down Davis’ spine.

“Who are you?” she had to collect all her composure to ask this question without stuttering or teeth chatter.

“Steven Grant Rogers,” now he sounded not just calm but rather tired to the bone. “The US Army, Captain, retired. Would you like to give me the baby, ma'am?

“I cannot.” Davis shook her head and pressed the shrieking and kicking little body to her chest. So-called Captain Rogers jumped into the van and took a step toward.

“Do you want another raid?” he asked. “On the hospital? Or on a foster family? Ophelia Sarkissian’s henchmen will not hesitate.”

Davis could not answer — some circuit in her head did not seem close and the speech center could not turn on. The name of this person — it meant something. It was important for some reason.

“Give the child to me. Say that I took the baby by force. Because if you do not give her, I will.”

But he cannot do this, a flaccid thought stirred in the midwife’s head. He cannot, he's…

“Captain America!” the circuit closed, a spark jumped. “You are Captain America.”

“Not anymore, more that a year. And that was an incredibly lousy year.”

He held out his hands, and Davis… she did not gave the girl away, just let him take it. Rogers hid the baby into the kangaroo baby bag under his leather jacket. When he zipped his jacket, Davis said almost for pro forma:

“You have no right.”

“I have every right,” the former Captain America smiled. “I'm the father.”

 

"That's not an argument," Pepper said. "For the authorities, anyway. Whether you are a father or not, kidnapping a child is a federal crime, and I am an accomplice.”  


“We have discussed this many times.”  
“Twice.”  
“Twice is not one, so it’s many. You mobilized a whole army of lawyers and they said that there was no chance to deprive Sarkissian of parental rights. Even if I weren’t wanted.”  
“They discussed a hypothetical situation. In your case…”  
“In my case, a dozen thugs were waiting for the hospital car at the junction. This is HYDRA, Pep. Not like it was before, but still HYDRA. And you do not know whether I kidnapped this child, you just gave some needy baby a bag with the things your Mark overgrew.”  
Pepper sighed.  
“Do not hold the bottle at a right angle, the mixture flows too fast, baby does not have time to swallow.”  
“Sorry. This way?”  
"Aha, just like this" Pepper dropped wearily into the chair. "Steve, when the Avengers left for some of their crazy missions, I always counted on you. On your sober mind. What happened between you two in that damned Siberia?”  
Steve sighed heavily, put the bottle on the table, took the baby upright, with her head on his shoulder.  
“Ask him.”  
“He didn't say anything. Just turned up in my house all beaten. He was looking for solace. And he got it.”  
Steve raised an eyebrow.  
"Mark?"  
Pepper grinned.  
“Mark. It's funny. We have... tried for two years in a row, and nothing. But one desperate night - and hola, we are parents...”  
"I thought you are… together again."  
“No, Steve. We appear together in public, and Tony tries to be Mark's father, but we are not together. I cannot herd two hyperactive boys. Do not tower above me, it's... scary.”  
"Sorry." Steve sat on the edge of the bed. A pretty big girl in his hands looked miniature.  
"Steve, I agreed to help you with this madness only because I expected answers. Because Tony did not give me any. It's classified to the boot. What happened in Siberia?”  
Steve paused for a moment, rocking the little girl. He had been changed during the past this year, and it was not not just a weight loss, a beard and hair cropped extremely short. Something seemed to extinguish inside him.

"How... did this whole story look like from your point of view?"  
"Well... you went to Europe to sign the Agreements. There was a terrorist assault on UNO in Vienna. Your…  front-line comrade was involved. Trying to protect him, you demolished the Leipzig airport. After that, you two fled to Siberia, Tony went after you. He returned all bruised. He did not tell me anything, but... Steve, how do you beat a man in the armor to leave him such bruises?”  
"You should have seen the other two guys.”

"I am not asking which of you was thrashed harder. I'm asking what the hell did you do in Siberia.”  
“We searched for five more Winter Soldiers. Helmut Zemo... the man who actually was behind that explosion in Vienna ... he let us know that they exist and sleep there, on a secret base in Oymyakon, in a former missile mine. Tony... was on our side for a while. Than Zemo showed him the video from the surveillance cameras, how Bucky killed his parents.”  
“Oh my God…”  
“Pepper, HYDRA poked in Bucky's head with a crowbar for sixty years. I've already lost him twice, I just couldn’t let Tony...”  
He stopped, and Pepper did not ask him to continue. Steve, torn between two friends, made a choice in favor of the one who he believed to need him more. Who suffered worse.  
She suspected something like that from the beginning. Tony kept silent for a reason, there was something more in it than just Captain America gone bats.  
"So you're now covering up the killer with half a century of experience and a complete brain disorder?"  
"He's not dangerous. He's ... technically dead.”  
“Technically?”  
“In cryostasis. Do not ask.”  
She did not ask. So, Steve lost not one but two friends. She understood better why he was clinging to this baby. He could not live just for himself, he needed to live for someone. In the eyes of many men, he would be an ideal woman.  
"Steve, you can put her on the bed. She’s not running anywhere, really. At this age they can not even raise their heads.”  
He put the baby on the bed. The girl threw up her tiny hands, but did not wake up.

"Have some coffee," Pepper advised. "And try to use every opportunity to rest. The baby will not let you rest too often.”  
Steve nodded and walked to the stove.  
"You are not looking at her," Pepper observed as they drank coffee.  
“What?” Steve said absently.  
"You check her with your hand, but do not look at her."  
Of course, he immediately looked at the girl.  
"I ... every time I look at her, I start looking for her mother's features. I don’t find them... and start looking again.”  
"You will not find anything until the swell subsides. Her face was pushed through a very narrow place,” Pepper smiled. “Well, and if you find her mothers’ features, then what?”  
Steve picked up the girl again.  
"I don’t know. What if I couldn’t love her anymore? I do not believe in bad heredity and criminal skulls. But… what if I’ll become just a bad father?"  
"Here we go, typical parent fears. Well, there's at least half good heredity in her," Pepper smiled. "If you really are her father."  
Steve looked from under his brows.  
"I can count to nine."  
"But I would not vouch for... the temperance of Madame Sarkissian. Do you want to do a genetic analysis?”  
"And if it shows that I am not the father, then I could leave Sarah to a parish nursery somewhere in Ohio with a clear conscience? No. I’ll do what I decided to do.”  
"Er, Steve... It’s not that I pry... but how did it happen? Of all the women in all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, you choose Madame Hydra?”  
Steve looked again from under his brow.  
"It's not that I choose," he said quietly.


	2. Nomad

When HYDRA collapsed with the SHIELD, and the most ambitious of its projects sank to the bottom of the Potomac river, Ophelia Sarkissian foresaw not the collapse of her career, but the opportunity of ascension.  


She did not chase alien artifacts or enhanced people, neither she wanted to hail avenge on the Avengers, or to rule the world and get a pair of skates in addition. Her task was money, raising and whitewashing, so when Strucker, Zemo, Malik and the others went down the drain, Ophelia or Viper, or Madame Hydra, as she preferred to call herself, stayed afloat. For her, almost nothing has changed: the circulation of drugs, weapons, slaves remained the same. Only the number of ambitious idiots above her head has dropped to zero.  


New times brought new opportunities. The Syrian war exasperation, for example provided her with an excellent scheme: recruiters in the war zone promised the refugees a ship to Europe. Refugees were actually delivered by cars to the coast and loaded onto a ship. After that, away from the shore, refugees were robbed from all they had and then selected: old men, women and children too small were shot and dumped in the sea, young men, women, girls and boys were transported to the buyers: partly to the Emirates, they paid well for the virgins, partly to the Philippines, or anywhere on request.  
Three such raids were completed successfully, but the fourth time, a quinjet appeared, as if from nowhere, and a team of six people landed from it. Ophelia’s fighters were virtually ripped. The survivor, who managed to get out of prison, told tales: a black-winged angel, shooting his victims from the sky; a witch that stopped bullets with move of her eyebrows, and threw her opponents into the distant barchans with her little finger; a red-haired demoness that beat men like kittens; a man who disappeared and then appeared out of nowhere and kicked asses; Robin Hood with a bow and arrows. And the leader — a strong man clad in black, who wrapped his head and face with black shemagh, like Tuareg. Probably, because of this, journalists called him “El Badawi” — the Nomad.

The magnificent six killed most of the Viper’s squad, collared the remaining ones, loaded the refugees and prisoners onto the ship, and the Nomad brought it to Cyprus, then disappeared into the night.  


Ophelia led the fifth raid herself.  
It wasn’t that this branch of her business was so important or the losses were especially great, but the underground business is like that: give a slack once and they will tear pieces from you until nothing remains. Especially if you're a woman. You need to have more balls and teeth than any man, and if you quit, it's because you’ve got all you want and not because some fucking self-styled Lawrence of fucking Arabia hijacked your slave ship.  


She made inquiries. Nomad was widely known in narrow circles. He was seen in Damascus, in Aleppo, in Latakia, he helped the wretched and downtrodden, provided security during the evacuation of refugees. Probably, he was offended that she spoiled his business. Or he was one of those idiots that stick their necks for free. He spoke like an American, but it could be a smoke screen. Ophelia strongly suspected that he was working for Israel. The Jews always tried to act as if they had nothing to do with it.  
However, no matter who he worked for. He and his masters should have been taught a lesson: do not cross Madame Hydra.

 

“What's bothering you?”  
"The ambush."  
“There was no ambush.”  
“Exactly. We punished them by five millions at least, and there was no ambush”.  
"We are too modest, Cap," Natasha came up as usual, unnoticed. "Five? Fifteen, at least.”  
“All the more so. Ronin, tell me that you found a mine.”  
“Nothing”.  
“Heck. If they did not mine the ship, then what?”  
"Uh," said the Falcon. "I do not want to look like Captain Obvious, but what if we cannot find anything just because there's nothing? No ambushes, no mines, no interceptors? What if these slavers are really stupid? Not everyone in this world remembers Sun-Tzu by heart.”  
"All the seven great treatises on martial arts," Wanda prompted. “In Chinese”  
"Enough," Steve said. “The clock is ticking.”  
"My point exactly," said Clint. “Cap, we cannot stick in these rocks, like a pimple on the ass. The ship is not mined, it is fueled, people are waiting, the Lebanese border guards are about to remember their professional duty. It's time to take on our heels.”  
"Good." Steve Rogers looked at the rocks again. Were he the one who organized all this devilry with the refugees trafficking, he would plant snipers in these rocks. But neither Falcon nor Clint found anyone. He could also, were he a ruthless bastard, attack an old trough, stuffed by refugees, from the air or from the sea with missiles. Yes, the quinjet could destroy the aggressor, but it could not intercept the missile. "I do not want to be that guy in your movie, Nat. The one who did not leave the boat and exploded along with it. I don't want to go to the bottom in the company of three hundred non-combatants ... I hope that the vessel really is not mined.”

"You developed a paranoia," Falcon shook his head.  
"That does not mean we're not spied upon," Steve grinned back. “Paranoia is good,” said Clint. “Paranoia saves lives.”  


Steve wanted to leave this beach no less than others. Here they were like targets in a shooting gallery. Even the rescued refugees looked at them with fear, some with hatred. These people did not know what pirates wanted to do with them, from their point Steve and his comrades were the killers who meddled in their flight. They either did not believe the explanations, or simply did not understand what Steve was talking about. Most of them were bad in English and French, and Rogers was bad in Arabic.  
"Boot into the quinjet and cover us from the air," he commanded.  
When the old trough was on the half way to Cyprus, Steve found a mine on board.  
"It's full of sick people," Natasha heard on the radio. “Some kind of hemorrhagic fever, apparently. They were silent until the last, they were afraid that we would leave them on the shore. Half of them have high temperature, eruptions, maculae, hematomas. Some have diarrhea and vomit. I try to separate sick from healthy, but it turns out not very good. Do not come aboard. Under no circumstances.”  
“How are you?”  
"I spent two hours here. Even if I'm infected, I do not feel anything yet. In any case, I give a distress signal and drive the vessel into quarantine.”  
"This will undermine our cover."  
“Well, nothing lasts forever.”  
Half an hour later, already in view of the shore, Steve stopped contacting. Quinjet had to leave the sector, because of Greek military boats and Turkish helicopters approaching the "plague ship". The ship was driven to Limassol, placed at the quay and occupied by medical personnel in biosecurity suits. Soon it became known that the ship is infected with Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus. The infected people were taken to a mobile hospital, uninfected were sent to the quarantine department of the refugee camp.

Steve was not among those, nor among others.  
It was an ambush.  


Paphos sounds almost like “pathos”. A stupid word. However, in Greek it means just "feeling."  
They were stuck in Paphos, because Limassol was crawling with militaries and security services. A new heroic (or criminal) deed of the Nomad occupied the news screens — and, as always, the elusive vigilant vanished... Except Natasha and other Secret Avengers knew that he didn’t. Steve did not appear on any of their two Cyprus safehouses. Neither he dropped a call on their fixed channels. And the whole day had already passed.  
"Anyone could enter this ship in a protective suit and get out of it." Clint measured the hotel room with steps. “Anyone.”  
"What if we missed him? If he is in the one of the clinics?” asked Wanda.  
Natasha shook her head. A fair-haired barn-door wide-shouldered American was not possible to lose among the Syrians. The informers would certainly report him.  
"He could not get infected, could he? I do not remember him ever got sick," said Sam.  
"He can get sick," said Natasha. “Like any of us, he gets flu, every year. He just drinks tea with a lemon for the night, and in the morning, he gets up in the pink. He once contracted the norovirus, so he stuck in the the toilet for four hours, and that was it.”  
“And how badly would the Crimean-Congo virus affect him?”  
Everyone had already dipped in the Wikipedia and was impressed with what Crimean-Congo virus could do.  
“I do not know. But I don’t consider the version that Steve in one of the clinics. Even if it wass true, he would appear himself. No, he was kidnapped. At the best case — by our guys from the CIA. At the worst...”  
"Let's talk about the worst," Clint said. "It's too well planned for our CIA friends."  
“Agreed. We need to return to Syria and shake something from our informants. I suggest you and Sam do this. Wanda and I will stay here and take up the accounting.”  
Wanda sighed sadly. “Accounting” was a term for data search in business and financial documentation. Yes, intelligence is not just shooting and chasing, it's often a boring, even dull occupation. But after all, there is also a payback: for example, this scheme with refugees they found out exactly this way. Ships leave no traces on the water, but they always leave traces on the paper. And Natasha hoped to take this trail. If only it would be not too late for Steve.  
"Don’t you think," Falcon said slowly, "that we too could get infected? We all contacted with the sick. Not just Steve.”  
“You thought of it, well done,” said Natasha. “Tomorrow, we all sit here make the accounting. We order the room service, pancakes and pizza.”  
“Is this a special diet for a fever?” Sam was amazed.  
"This is something that can be shoved under the door," said Natasha. "Although we are unlikely to be sick. Such a crowd of refugees could not get infected so quickly in a natural way, they must have received the virus with food or water. But we, of course, will undress and search each other for ticks of the genus Hyalomma.”  
"It says that virus can be airborn," Sam looked anxiously at his pad.  
"Nobody sneezed at you? Were we all wearing masks? No, I do not think we are infected. But caution is the parent of safety.”

"I hope they're romantics," said Clint, unbuttoning his shirt.  
“What do you mean?” Wanda wondered.  
“I mean, if they are pragmatists, then things gone bad. A bullet in the head even Steve cannot digest.”  
“And if they are ‘romantics’"?  
"Well, uh..." Clint grinned. “Some people are just fond of complex plans and cunning combinations, like your iron buddy Ultron. He could have killed us in block, but started to quibble and quibbled until we nailed him...”  
Having taken off his shirt, Clint examined it from the inside, and then took off his trousers.  
"Wanda and I will go to the bathroom." Natasha nodded invitingly, getting up.  
"And what will we do, when will we find them?" asked Wanda.  
"Burn that with a lighter, the best way to do with ticks. Nat, we need a clipped syringe, in case some lil' bastard already dug under someone’s skin..."  
"No, I mean what to do with those who captured Captain."  
Clint looked up straight at Wanda’s face, with the most unpleasant grin.  
\- Well, unlucky for them, I'm not a romantic...


	3. Not today

Viper liked to shoot two birds with one stone. Or more than two. As now, for example: to disrupt a rescue operation — check. To show the world that meddling with Syrian refugees is a fraught with consequences — check. To ruin the reputation of the Nomad — check. To ruin Nomad himself — on the list, as well as to teach the lesson to fresh slaves. She unhooked a single party of refugees to Nomad, but that did not mean that she was not going to capture another. Everything was thought out and the first part of her business-plan worked like a Swiss clock. She hid among the refugees, wrapped in a burka. Among the Syrian women, that was not very common, the greater part of them wore just shawls, and burka-wearers were jokingly called "ISIS ninjas". But the closer ISIS approached, the more "ninjas" and less jokes showed up in the streets. There were four of them on this ship, except her.  
Of course, she did not drink water, contaminated with shit of infected mice. So she badly suffered from thirst all the way to the ship. Along with the other wrappies and the more emancipated women of the East, she started screaming when the bullets flew, she threw herself face down into the roadside pebbles and did not raise her head until Nomad and his group put down all the idiots she had destined for the slaughter. Then rescuers drove the refugees down, to the waiting ship. Half of the refugees at that time was already sick, but everyone was hiding the fact, so she had to force events to draw Nomad’s attention to this kind of situation.  
Having abide the moment until Nomad gave his cover group an order not to board the ship, she got behind him and jabbed him under the shoulder with a syringe contained a dose of heroin that could kill normal man. Biochemical joke: heroin for the hero. Then she had very unpleasant minute, when he tried to catch her and restrain — he was clearly the one not to give up without a fight. Well, he had his fight. Maybe another time he would have come out as a winner, but now the more intensely he moved, the quicker the heroin dispensed into his body. Nomad’s moves became slow and inaccurate, Ophelia easily escaped his blows and accurately put her own, but this enforcer had an impenetrable layer of muscles and some hellishly strong skull: a blow with a wrench did not even impress him, only blood filled the left eye socked, and that was it. She was resourceful enough to have a support group infiltrated among the refugees so they came to the rescue. But even the three men had to embrace the suck to put down one poisoned Nomad, damn all the Enhanced in the world.

The men who boarded up under the guise of a disinfection team pulled him out on a stretcher in a body bag. On the way to Larnaka, he managed to recover in the car trunk and broke his handcuffs. Fortunately, heroin had not yet burnt out completely, Nomad could not move with former ease. With the help of tire lever and four pairs of sturdy shoes, he was calmed down. In Larnaka, on a boat, they tied him up with cable and stuck him in the cockpit. When they reached the “Abyssinian” they heaved him, still tied up, in a container and left until the ship passed the Suez Canal. Ophelia hoped that two days without food, water and a toilet will make the bastard a little bit more negotiable.  
She hoped in vain.  
Ophelia told Khalid to conduct the first interrogation, and she herself pretended to be the one of five dozens of chicks. Chicks should have been given a scare. This time she was not in a burka, just wore a shawl.

The chicks were loaded onto the Abyssinians at the same time when Nomad and his team "saved" the infected lot. They trembled with horror, but no longer wailed. They spent two days in the hold, ith only three toilet buckets for the whole company. These three buckets were poured on the Nomad’s head to bring him to senses: he endured the heat surprisingly bad for the Enhanced.  
After this, Khalid popularly explained to the chicks that this fool tried to play a liberator hero. So let’s take a close look to what will happen with someone who decides to flee.  
By the Khalid’s sign Nomad was attached to the cable, thrown overboard and dragged under the keel. Chicks keened a little when he splashed into the water — and they keened even more loudly, when he was lifted from the other side by a winch.  
"Abyssinian" was a rusting trough of the "handysize" class built in the 80s of the last century. Khalid freighted it (as well as other ships for this kind of transportation) on "easy to get rid of” principle. The bottom was careened, probably, also in the last century. Ophelia did not know how much shit had grown on it, but Nomad's clothes looked as if she had been through a shredder. It still held on his body where the cable was wrapped, but in other places, it hung in shreds, and sometimes you could not tell it from skin. After such a treatment people, if they survive, start to show a willingness to cooperate simply to get a bullet and stop suffering. Especially when salt water gets into the wounds. Were Nomad striving for every breath, he would scream aloud.

But when he finally recovered his breath and cleared his throat, the only sentence Khalid heard from him was:  
"I can do that all day."  
Ophelia grinned into her shawl. Many who survived the first torture and did not break down, began to ruffle. But the most interesting part starts when the endorphin tide subsides, and the pain does not disappear. You often do not even need a second torture — just leave your prisoner alone for a while, let him think about the perspective: what will happen tomorrow, when new blows, burns and fractures will lay upon the old ones.  
However, Nomad was also not new to this business. Whether he provoked Khalid for a second run under the keel, which would be lethal, or he realized that they were not breaking him, the show was for chicks. In any case, he looked at Khalid not with a challenge and not with fear, but with close attention. He was assessing the situation.  
Ophelia suddenly noticed that she was playing with her shawl.  
And then Khalid made a mistake. Instead of driving chicks back into the hold, and giving the most rumpled ones to the team for practical classes, he stepped closer to the Nomad and, put his finger into a particularly deep cut on prisoner’s side, ripping the skin.  
Nomad cried out. But at the same time he kicked Khalid in the groin. Khalid managed to dodge, the blow fell on the hip, but it was hard enough for Khalid to hit the deck.

Of course, Khalid could not leave it like that — otherwise the whole lesson for the chicks would be wasted. Khalid and Michelle took up their truncheons and started to beat the tar out of the hanging man. And to consolidate success, Khalid brought rubber whip and made chicks beat him, every chick at least once, hard enough to draw blood. Chicks whimpered in a low voice asked for forgiveness, one fainted, but no one dared to refuse.

The captive remained silent.

When the turn came to Ophelia, she laid her blow across his side, where skin was torn already, hard enough to make a man cry.

He didn’t.  
“So now what?” asked Khalid when they retreated to the deckhouse, where conditioners barely resisted midday heat.  "Why do you need all this show? Why not just gut him? Wasn’t that the plan from the very beginning?”  
"He has not told us nothing yet," Ophelia reminded him.  
"Well, he will. Give me two hours.”  
“We have nowhere to hurry. At night I'll talk to him.”  
"What do you mean, nowhere to hurry? You were going to dump his corpse in Hurghada.”  
“I have changed my mind. He's an Enhanced. He has a market value. Perhaps greater than all these wenches combined. Do not cripple him. You can drag him behind the ship, but not under the keel. Let him tan and bathe, Red Sea is the resort area, after all.”  
Khalid laughed. His sense of humor was rather simple.  
"Go to the wheelhouse," she said. “I want to rest. The day was tiresome.”  
Khalid nodded and strode to the stairs. Ophelia entered her cabin, locked herself, and fell onto the bed. Not because she wanted to sleep — on the contrary, she would not fall asleep not for all the tea in China. She closed her eyes and could see Nomad’s body as clear, as if the retina of her eyes were the "Polaroid" photographic paper.  
This awkward moment when you start to torture someone and suddenly, your panties are on fire.  
For her, this was not the first time, and the cure was always simple. She unbuttoned her jeans, ran her hand under her panties and pressed her fingers hard against the swelling lips, which she rarely opened to anyone after she had completed the mandatory spyware program.  
This mandatory program made frigid many girls from her group. The curators thought it was for the better: control in all situations. Good thing they didn’t think up to clitorectomy. Ophelia was lucky: she could enjoy sex... with whom, that's the question. Man shoves his member in you, and begins to imagine himself your lord and master. Which creates disciplinary problems. She had to get rid of two capable lieutenants, and since that, Ophelia did not repeat mistakes. She also had no time for contacts outside of work. There were rent-boys... for which also there was no time, too often…

Her fingers habitually made familiar movements — squeezed, stroked, fiddled, while she imagined Nomad's body, slashed with seashells. The bumps of tense muscles, lined by stripes of blood mixed with seawater, covered with rags of wet clothes. Fair skin, fair hair on the chest, dark gold, gleaming under the ruthless Arab sun. Ophelia did not like the hairy machos, nor the marbled epilated angels, and Nomad was made as if by her design: a thin growth twisted in two golden spirals around his nipples, and ran from the sternum down, along the "white line of the belly," like a thin arrow — under the belt on which the rests of trousers hung.

Even on the "plague ship" Ophelia noted that Nomad was built like a brick shithouse: long slender legs, shoulders exactly twice as wide as the hips — she wanted to check them, to measure with her finger span. But when the clothes were torn... damn, that was not simply good, that was the perfection. Harmony. Well, they badly messed his face up is in the fight, but with body like this, who cares for the face at all. Ophelia pressed her clitoris between her fingers for the last time and came. She restored her breath and rolled over on the stomach.  
There was an orgasm, but there was no satisfaction.  
Something still bothered her.  
She must have seen Nomad before, that's the thing. Without a beard, this beard is no older than three months.  
Ophelia reached for the table, picked up the tablet and started the search.  
"Damn," she said after a minute and a half. She fastened her jeans, took the tablet and went to the wheelhouse. Silently, she passed the tablet to Khalid.  
He looked and said the same word, but in Arabic.  
"We caught Captain America. Now what?”  
“His price has increased by times.”  
"So, untie him? Move him to the cabin?”  
“Not yet. I'm still angry at him.”  
"I see," Khalid grinned. "Can I get him out of the water?"  
“ Of course. I want to talk to him later. Do not destroy my legend.”  
She drummed her fingernails over the console.  
“Press him harder. Make him scream. But don’t maim.”

Khalid did not succeed.  
When the sky darkened, Ophelia showed up on the deck, pretending to be the one of the captives. Nomad — for some reason it was more convenient for her to think of him as of Nomad — was kneeling by the bulwark, tied to the railing by the hands. Cool breeze blew from the sea, but prisoner’s body was seemingly hot. He was breathing heavily, with a wheeze. His hair was prickled with seawater; the remnants of his clothes looked crisp, like paper.  
Ophelia took a bottle of water from under her shirt, opened it, sprinkled in Nomad’s face and put the bottle's neck to his lips.  
"Take it, drink," she whispered with Arabic accent.  
He began to drink — greedily, passionately. Having emptied a small bottle, he dropped his head on his chest and exhaled: “Thank you.”  
The water almost instantly oozed on his forehead.  
"Take it, eat." She found his lips with her fingers and put a mozzarella lump in them.  
He swallowed the cheese.  
"They'll sell us today," she whispered. “You're strong. You showed it to me. They did not break you. I had to hit you, I am so sorry. I'll run, I can find your friends, tell them where you are. Is there a way to tell them about you? Tell until they find me here.”  
He turned his head to her and opened his swollen eyelids with difficulty. Then he smiled.  
“Good effort. Do you know where the mistake is?”  
She froze.  
"You smell too good. You did not spend the night in this hold. And you were not raped. And your nails. Perfect manicure. Look at other girls: they all have broken nails. They tried to defend themselves against your men. Clung to each other, to their relatives... Next time take care of the smell and nails.”  
Ophelia squatted beside him. He smelled of sweat, blood and sea.  
"Anyway, thanks for water."  
"And thank you," she smiled. “For the advice. Maybe somehow I'll use it. Or not. Not everyone has enhanced sense of smell, like Captain America.”  
He grinned and shook his head.  
“How inconvenient when you are on Wikipedia.”  
“A matter of perspective. For me it was rather convenient...”  
He shrugged slightly, as if acknowledging her right.  
"...And it's hard for me not to wonder — where did Captain America find out about our little tourist agency?"  
"How about ‘Go To Hell’"?  
Ophelia laughed, rose, leaned her elbows on the railing so that her hip almost touched his face.  
"Everyone starts talking, sooner or later. You, too, will speak.”  
"Maybe." He lowered his head. “But not today.”


	4. Towards and through

A few years ago, when Dr. Banner said that he was always angry, Steve Rogers also understood his own secret.  
He was always afraid.

He was afraid of the dark, afraid to stay alone, afraid to fall asleep and not wake up. He was afraid of rats, big dogs and big boys.  
And, of course, he was afraid of pain.  
Constant illnesses, which he picked up as a child, made him an expert on this issue. Sore throat and burning mustard plasters, injections and bitter pills and nasal drops, from which his head hurt. He was afraid of medical procedures so much that he had seizures, save tears and shameful weakness in his knees.  
Once, he was about five years old, he caught a nightmarish otitis. Everything was very bad, even these new drugs, sulpho-what-they-call-it were not helping. Dr. Weiner said that he needs to pierce Steve’s eardrum. Steve didn’t know where there is drum in his ear, but strongly dislikeв the word “pierce”. "It would not hurt," doctor smiled. Little Stevie knew for sure that these words meant a lot of pain. Yeah, right, thought he, and just in case, started to wail.  
Then his mother shook him by the shoulders (he immediately shut up), bent down to look straight into his eyes, and said in a steady voice: "The doctor was joking, Stevie. It will hurt. Hurt like nothing in your life. But if we do not make this puncture, all pus will go straight into your brain and you will die. So I do not care how you scream and kick, I'll hold you tight until the doctor finishes. I love you too much to let you die. There is only one way to go through this: start and finish.”  
Mom spoke in such a stern voice that Stevie somehow instantly reconciled with the inevitable. The pain was hellish indeed, but he did not wriggle out of Mom's hands, while she was pressing his head firmly to the table, and, as Mom said later, did not even yell. He himself would not have vouched for anything, because all he could hear at the time was the echo of a large bell from the Church of All Saints on Throop Avenue.  
In general, that event had turned some kind of switch. Steve did not stop being afraid of pain, no — he was afraid, as before, so that his knees were melting. But he began to choose this path: to meet the pain and pass through it. Start and finish.  
And fear had turned into a signal, into a beacon. As soon as this dull feeling appeared in the stomach, Steve knew where to move. Towards and through.  
"And where did this lead you in the long run?"  
The voice in the head that asked this question was unpleasantly similar to Tony's.

...Into the hold of the old dry-cargo freighter, that was carrying the lot of slaves, weapons, drugs and devil knows what else, devil knows where. By the way, Stark, you are not the one to throw stones. Not a role model of sanity.  
Steve moved, trying to find some least painful position for the body. Half an hour ago, he managed to get on his right side with a slight support on the left hand and knee, in a pose in which the wounded are laid, if they can not be immediately evacuated from the battlefield. But both the side and the hand were already numb. He could not move to the left side, the shoulder and thigh there were slashed to meat. As well as the back. The chest and abdomen were heavily bruised when slavers practiced boxing. It’ll be OK till the wedding day, Natasha would say, but now...  
The heat made it difficult to think. He suffered from heat badly. Great idea — to make a guy whose metabolism works like a blast furnace. How do you save him from overheating? Well, he probably will sweat four times more intensively than average man… and run to hypovolemic shock with seven-league steps.

He hoped to die from dehydration for some time, but that didn’t happen, they provided him with enough water after all.  
Praise God, that it was not a refrigerator ship; if Green-Nailed Lady recognized him, she could easily figure out how to bring him to panic.  


Girls. Their quiet conversations, their groans and weeping sometimes came from neighboring containers constantly reminding him that he had screwed up not only himself. He got caught on a false bait, missed the main goal. The informers failed.  


Several girls were taken at the night. They did not return. Green-clawed woman said they will be sold. Steve tried to estimate their location — two days from Cyprus, judging by the salinity of the water — the Red Sea, somewhere not far from Hurghada. Will he be able to find at least one of them?  
Nat would say, probably: it’s not your fault, it’s just the enemy this time was prepared better. Bucky would say: you do not know how to accept a defeat. Wanda would say: sometimes you cannot save everyone, you taught it to me yourself. Sam would say: get over it, bro, even your shoulders could not carry the burden of the world.  
Tony would say nothing.  
Tony understood perfectly how it is — when the spine cracks under the weight of responsibility. That is why he signed the Sokovian Accords...  
T'Challa did not say anything. He just gave some money and helped to fuel the quinjet. He had a strong allergy to slavers.  
There was an instant temptation to tell them about T'Challa and see how these pirates try to have a go on his royal majesty. This temptation Steve quickly suppressed.  
In the end, he managed to fall in… not a sleep, but a feverish nap, too familiar from childhood, filled with chills, scarlet fever, measles and pneumonia.  
But this slumber helped: when Steve was awakened with a kick, he felt a little better. Almost all wounds were closed, swells were subsided, and although the bruises showed all the colors of rainbow, they no longer restrained his movements... well, almost. He even wanted to take a leak, which meant: a dangerous phase of dehydration passed.  
This time they brought food. The slavers stayed outside, aiming three guns at him. The slave girl brought some cloddy mass in a plastic disposable plate. Neither a spoon nor a fork was added to the vessel, and the lumpy mass turned up to be some kind of maize. What was done to the corn flour to make it into this, he didn’t know. But the corn was treated no better than the girls.

"Get up and out," one of the escorts said in French when Steve had finished eating.  
There was no point in arguing. He stood up and straightened, as far as the chains allowed, reeling on his feet. He did not eat at least three days, and his body spent a lot of energy on healing wounds.  
They led him out on the deck. It was night again. Steve jerked his head up, trying to determine the location of the ship by the stars, but someone pushed him, so he nearly fell. Chains, designed for a lesser man, allowed him to make only short steps.  
They brought him into the deckhouse. Interrogation? The door to the left, the push in the back ... Steve was in the shower.  
The same slave girl was given rounded scissors and ordered to cut off the remains of his clothing. Then they ordered him to kneel down, and threw her a bottle of liquid soap. They also aimed from the doors, telling jokes about how useful for her is to learn how to undress and wash men.  
Fortunately, they did not insist on a particularly thorough washing: the girl lathered only Steve's head and shoulders. She was very afraid of hurting him. When she finished, they gave her a safety razor and made her shave off his beard. Then they gave her a terry towel, surprisingly decent and clean. She wiped him with a frown of shame, and, on orders, wrapped a towel around his waist. All he could do was to press her hand stealthily.  
Out of the shower, along the corridor, second floor, the door on the right. The cabin was quite spacious, clean, somehow piss-elegant. Separate shower room, from which came the sound of water. In the middle of the cabin — a chair, solid, metal.  
"Sit down," said the tall mulatto, who spoke French, aiming at Steve’s forehead. Steve sat down. At gunpoint, they removed his handcuffs.  
"Hands behind your back," the mulatto commanded.  
Steve obeyed. The chain was passed between his legs, under the chair, and the handcuffs clicked again, now behind his back.  
So, interrogation after all. Why bother with washing then? Nice room, a shame to spoil it with blood... And the towel is so good...  
The sound of water stopped. The door of the shower opened. Woman came in, Lady Green Nails. Now he could see that her hair was a greenish shade, too. And the light silk robe she wore, woven in Chinese dragons, was also green. ‘Twas her shtick, probably.  
She carried a small tray of pressed bamboo. Two syringes and a tourniquet lay on the tray.  
Steve tensed slightly. That’s why she was not afraid to dirty the room with blood: she chose a clean method. The only question is — what exactly. The drug she used on him first was stunningly effective. Like morphine, only stronger. What else does she have in the store — the deuce knows.

"The SHIELD spread rumors," she checked the syringe for air, "that no drug can affect Captain America. Any person, even slightly familiar with biochemistry, understands that this is bullshit. It is impossible to be a man of flesh and blood and remain insensitive to any drug. I was glad to see that I was right. You reacted well to heroin. Now the dose will be less. I need you conscious.”  
He jerked, but the three assistants fixed him hard. The lady took the tourniquet and bind his arm over the elbow.  
"You do not have to break out like this, Captain. At the moment, it's just an anesthetic. Better work with your palm. Or do you like pain?”  
...He did not like the pain. So, when he was injured on the second day after landing in Normandy, he, like all normal people, received a dose of morphine so that the doctor could safely get a splinter of a shell out and cut the affected tissue. Everything went fine until he began to wake on the operating table in ten minutes, in the midst of the metal mining. Great, they injected one more dose. And the third, when they sewed him up. And the fourth, too keep him from waking up. And the fifth, when it turned out that he can not keep neither food nor water in himself...  
He spent two weeks in the hospital. Wounds closed in two days, the rest of the time he got rid of morphine addiction. And after that he let himself be cut only under local anesthesia or without any.  
After that, other drugs were tested on him, just in case. Barbiturates gave him just a short allergy with sneezing and fever. Alcohol his body rejected decisively. Cocaine worked as it should both when inhaled, and with injection, the anesthetic effect was weak, but the burst of power — impressive. However, after the energy rush passed, Steve fell like a wet rag, and spent another day in this state.  
All this went into his medical file. Therefore, when he was dragged from the ice, they immersed him in a medical sleep with some hormonal preparation, to avoid the withdrawal.  
Already in the new world, then, one of the Fury’s experts explained: the body itself produces drugs. Endorphins. Captain America's body produces them on an industrial scale, because Captain America, God save the souls of the super-serum inventors, used to make muscle efforts accompanied by microfractures in the muscles and bones. And if the body of Captain America, God save the soul of Dr. Erskine, receives a dose of an opiate very similar to these endorphins — morphine, heroin or some other rubbish — it instantly integrates this shit into metabolism and stops the production of its own endorphins.

In short, alcohol and barbiturates his body marked like "poisons" and said a resolute "no." A sly saboteur, cocaine, pretending to be a hormone, could seep into the control center and tear off the shutoff valve. And with a broken shutoff valve Captain America can do a lot more than your average Johnny. But the opiates brazenly build into the metabolism and pretend that they were always at home. Drug dependence develops with one or two doses. If it were not for yesterday's (or the day before yesterday?) torture marathon, Steve would have certainly felt the withdrawal syndrome.  
"Do you like pain?" You will not believe, doctor, but pain is way better than withdrawal syndrome.  
He tried to break free. Really tried it. He continued his efforts even when the needle left the vein, even when it became clear that it was pointless to break away.  
And then a dull pleasant warmth poured into his chest, spreading over his legs and hands with a viscous tide. Mouth filled with the taste of maple treacle. The air had a taste of maple treacle. And the smell. And color. And the density.  
The henchmen released him. There was mi sense in holding him anymore, he was trussed by blissful indifference. He exhaled and threw back his head. The woman stood over him, slightly bent forward. Her wet hair slid over his face.  
By her sign, the henchmen left. Some strange interrogation.  
The woman's hands fell on his shoulders, cool fingers ran along the closed wounds.  
“That's better?” the woman asked. "Much better, isn’t it?"  
"Yes..." something whispered inside.  
"No," he answered.  
Drugged or not, Stephen Grant Rogers remained himself. Drowning in the dull indifference of the soul and body, he remembered: this woman stood behind everything. On her orders, they killed people they couldn’t sell, robbed the living and the dead, sold others into slavery and raped the girls to break them. This woman was the same as Pierce, as Schmidt, as those who cooked soap from human bodies. Steve Rogers hated her.  
"Liar," her hands slid to his chest, she squeezed his nipples between her fingers.  
It was not an interrogation, after all.  
He could not help laughing.  
“Good grief, is this "wash her and bring her to me," a gender inversion? Do you think that played on man this cliché will be less... cliché?”  
"I'm sorry, what did you say?" Green nails dug into his peeled shoulder. Even through heroin he... felt.

“Rumors were, you don’t have any scars. Every wound heals on you, with no trace at all.”

“Rumors exaggerate.”

“I see,” she touched the star-shaped mark under his solar plexus, where Bucky’s bullet went out. “I like scars. They tell you stories.”

“It seems, you are a keen storywriter.”

She laughed.

“Right now, I’m not going to write anything. Just to fuck you, dear captain.”

Steve was certainly not in the sexual mood. He was almost asleep, to be true.

“Good luck with this,” he said.  
She unwound the towel from his stomach, and ran her hand down along the strip of hair, then grabbed at his penis in a masterly manner, squeezed and slightly pulled.

Nothing happened.  
“Disappointed?” he asked. Somewhere, some part of him felt humiliated, used, exposed — but this part watched what was happening as through the murky glass. The other part was in command. The one that turned on when he was alone against the four bruisers. When he joked from inside the Stark’ device “Is it too late to go to the bathroom?” When he scheduled a date in a falling plane.

"Not at all," the woman smiled. “You are harmoniously built.”  
She undid her robe, under which there was nothing. Well, except for a pair of first-class legs, a broad chest with perfectly developed mammary glands, a flat belly and a nearly smooth delta under it. A shame. He always liked athletically built women, just like this one.  
However, there was no physiological reaction. Not at the sight, nor at the touch. He grinned.  
"Looks like you get no change out of me, lady. I'm not in a mood.”  
“You think?” She smiled even wider, then reached for the table where the second syringe was lying on the tray.  
"I'll fall asleep from the second dose."  
“And who told you that’s a second dose of heroin?” She laughed. She tourniquetted his arm with the belt of her robe. “Have you heard about speedball?”  
Having made the injection, she untied the belt and stepped back, holding the syringe with the gesture of the artist, looking at the picture.  
“Some kind of fashion sport?” he muttered.  
“Oh my God. Are you so unspoiled? You hung out with celebrities, lived in Stark Tower — and you are still unaware about such an important part of American culture?”  
Tony? Yes, he mentioned something like that .... "When I was young and stupid..."  
Whatever it was, it worked. Blood rushed to the south at the speed of a freight train, the blissful half-dementia gave way to a frenetic thirst for action, and instead of the maple treacle, fireworks of taste sensations flickered on the tongue. Steve struggled to pretend that nothing happened, but there was one saboteur who did not listen to orders from the center. He lived his own separate life, straining and straightening with every heartbeat, to the sheer joy of a green bitch.  
"Heroin and cocaine," she said, throwing out the syringe. “Sedative and stimulant. In theory, they should neutralize each other. But instead, only unwanted side effects are neutralized. For example, heroin sleepiness. Now, I could fuck you till the cardiac arrest.”  
Indeed she could. Her hand lay on his nape, greedy, possessive. She pressed his face to her belly. To the breast. He cursed his sharpened sense of smell: she smelled tantalizing. There was nowhere to go from comparing her to the brood bitch, and he himself looked nasty in the light of this comparison, but even the consciousness of his shame aroused him now. Both nipples and penis seemed to be connected by a high-voltage transmission line, and something was ringing in the wires from this woman's touch. She took her course confidently, without hurry or uneasiness. Sitting down on his thighs, she squeezed his cock with her hand and, playing with fingers, brought it near the melting point — and let go again. She fawned upon his neck and shoulders, licked fresh scratches, as if tasting blood, leaned with her breast to his chest, and had she not avoided kissing him on the lips so thoroughly, he could close his eyes and imagine Sharon in her place. Well why not, anyway nothing remained except to reconcile with inevitable, relax and enjoy the ride. Suppose that Sharon wanted to play with you, handcuffs and all. Imagine that it is she who drives the head of your cock to the inner lips of her shell, that this is her breath burning between your shoulder and collarbone...  
A rather strong clout made him open his eyes.  
"I do not know who you think you are with," the green witch looked directly at his face, her large, widely spaced eyes half-closed. "But I do not like it. Look at me.”  
And, grabbing his hair above the forehead with one hand, she directed his cock into her with the other.  
"Do you know," he breathed, "that there could be children from unprotected contact?"  
She laughed.  
"And all sorts of unpleasant illnesses," he added.  
"For some reason," she said, swinging her hips from side to side, and making him tremble with delight, "I'm not afraid to pick up a gonorrhea on Captain America."  
"Oh, but I'm not so sure about you," please, he thought, let her sock me again, and maybe everything will fall!  
She did not. She only laughed and wrung his head farther back, sliding on its rod up and down with the rhythmicity and strength of a machine. Along with her movements, his breathing quickened, he almost surrendered, tried only not to moan and not to move his hips towards her, not to be an accomplice in his own rape. I hate you, he repeated with every thrust. I hate, — his cock moved in a narrow, moist, warm cramped place, stopped against a tough dead end, slid back. I hate, — her long strong fingers skillfully and sweetly tore at the strained nipple. I hate, — chain rattled. Hate...

He choked on his own breath as the piercing hot sweetness slashed under his throat, splitting him in half. Almost agony, almost pain, only with a positive value, but just as hard to resist and not to moan. As if his penis was a cumulative charge, piercing its way through the armor. For half a minute, he remained firm and she went on, squeezing him dry, but the energy was already running low. His skin suddenly became unusually sensitive. He felt everything — every little movement of air, every damp strand of her greenish mermaid hair, every drop of sweat he could count and describe its route. Multicolored lightings ran through his muscles with every move, and, opening his eyes, he was surprised that they were not visible.  
The woman looked him in the face intently and greedily. She leaned back to the length of her hands, so that she could not miss a single detail. Oh, he made interesting faces, probably ...  
"You know," her pale lips parted in a smile, "I really have something to thank you for. You removed from my path all those who occupied the top places in our power pyramid.”  
In our power pyramid? What does she mean? Colorful fireworks in Steve’s head prevented him from concentrating. Definitely drugs are evil.  
"Have not I introduced myself yet? My code name is Madame Hydra. Check out the irony.”  
“Irony checked.”  
He rushed forward and headbutted her full in the face. They both collapsed sideways with a chair and Steve tried to free his hands, but hopelessly tangled in the legs of the chair and lost precious seconds. A cool bare foot treaded on his neck, pressing his head against the carpet.  
And then Madame Hydra released the legs of the chainr, seized the chair by the back and forcefully smacked Steve across his back.  
It was a rather heavy metal chair, so she quickly got tired and put the chair down. Then she quietly wrapped her robe around her frame and girdled it, took out some ice from the refrigerator, pressed it to her nose, and said: “Bad idea. You can not even imagine how bad. OK, I can explain it to you.”  
And she pushed the call button on the selector.


	5. The girl next box

"But if somebody," said Tony, "was not such an asshole, he would not be lying here in the hold covered with his physiological fluids up to his ears and with broken legs.”  
"Hell would freeze before they break my legs. You couldn’t. In your power armor.”  
"The armor, yeah. Were I there, in my armor, like hell that bitch would have hewed me off with an injection of heroin. Together with you and with Rhodey, we would have that old tub brought to Cyprus without problems. We would have kicked them all from the boat feet foremost.”  
“Oh sure.” Steve somehow felt like gloating. “You would rather sit and wait until the UN bureaucrats deign to allow the Avengers to stick their nose in Syrian affairs. Or you would try to screw the Accords in your own unique style and got on the radars...”  
“On the radars? Look who’s talking! Hurts?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Good. Maybe next time you'll be smarter. Oh, what I’m talking about! If you got smarter every time you got bashed, you would have kicked my old man out of business before the army.”  
"Tony," said Steve, almost affectionately. "You're a darn product of my imagination. You cannot be smarter than me. Ontologically.”  
"I can," said Tony, pacing from one corner of the container to the other in his usual manner. "Because we are talking about your ‘I-concept’ that defines Steve Rogers as a guy who kicks against the pricks, and not a guy who can think his way out of any asshole. You deny your reasoning self and project it onto my personality. That’s how I can be smarter then you, being, technically, you. I'm flattered somehow, but... is it not the time to get out of here?”  
"I am too weak to break into the wheelhouse and send a signal through our channel. I need to eat properly at least once...”  
"Well, she still needs you. Maybe not all of you, only the certain part of your body, but this part without you will not work, so they will feed you sooner or later. But better sooner, than later, savvy?”  
"H-h-not really."  
“Here we go! To voice to yourself the obvious things, you need them to be said by vicious Tony Stark! Because holy and immaculate Steve Rogers cannot just seduce Madame Hydra and fuck his way to freedom.”  
“Now it's just holey Steve Rogers.”

Tony looked with reproach.

“You know that this pun was considered lame even by ‘Harry Potter’ character, right?”

Hell, laughing was really painful.

“I thought of it. I mean, of seducing her. But it’s pointless... First, I just don’t know how to seduce...”  
"Steve." Tony looked at him like at an idiot.  “You do not need to know how. Just bat your eyelashes, and you could seduce a lesbian. When you pass through the Tower foyer, half of the female staff drop their folders. Even Pepper was staring at your ass. However, she has my ass. Not a bad one, by the way!”  
"Everything Madame Hydra wanted from my ass, she's already got."  
"Believe me, friend, not everything. Otherwise, you would be way deader now.”  
“… and in the second place, to bat my eyelashes at her, I need to be in the zone of her visibility.”  
"And you will get there, I assure you. Just start giving them information.”  
“Not gonna happen.”  
"Make it happen. Merge lies and truth with what she already knows. Tell her that I am secretly in contact with you. That I fund your operations. Spill the beans about my security systems…”

“You are crazy.”  
“Not at least. I've changed the security codes from the time we had a spat. Everything you know is either obsolete, or already known. You need only to draw her attention.”  
“And what is next?”  
“Batting your eyelashes. I cannot fucking believe that I have to explain this all to a guy old enough to be my father!”

A soft laugh came from behind the wall. Then one of the girls began to sing, two or three joined, clapping their hands in the rhythm of some Arab pop music.

“Do you hear?” said Tony. “They find the strength to laugh and sing. Because otherwise they could go mad in this hell. Do you know where they are being taken? Do you know what will happen to them there? They will smile at their owners and customers. Imitate an orgasm. Say with admiration in their eyes that they had never seen such a huge dick to the owner of a miserable doodle. Swallow insults. Swallow whatever will be put in their mouths...”  
“Shut up.”  
"They do not have a team that is looking for them to save. There is only you. If you die heroically, who will pull them out?”  
Tony clapped Steve on the knee. This shifted the delicate balance of pain that Steve tried so hard to find. The spasm passed over his body like an electrical discharge. No matter how big a lad you become, there is always someone who can dump a bag of bruises on you. Especially if there are four "someones".  
Okay. At least, he won’t mind killing HYDRA goons.  
"I'm sorry," Tony grinned unpleasantly. "You should not have defended the man who murdered my parents."  
And he disappeared. The laughter in the next container died down. Probably, because he groaned. Probably in a loud voice.  
He ran his tongue over his lips. Sandpaper on sandpaper. Guards left him water in a plastic bottle, but it still had to be reached, and Steve’s body was now like an ore drum with rocks inside: move it, and stones begin to roll over again, rattling and grinding each other.  
"Sing," he asked. “It's okay, do not pay attention to me. Sing.”  
He heard them whisper in Arabic for a while, then took a cautious breath. Lips and tongue barely obeyed.

As I was goin' over  
The Cork and Kerry Mountains  
I saw Captain Farrell  
And his money, he was countin'  
I first produced my pistol  
And then produced my rapier  
I said, "Stand and deliver

Or the devil he may take ya"

 

Musha rain dum a doo, dum a da  
Whack for my daddy, oh  
Whack for my daddy, oh  
There's whiskey in the jar, oh

 

I took all of his money  
And it was a pretty penny  
I took all of his money,  
Yeah, and I brought it home to Jenny  
She swore that she loved me,  
No, never would she leave me  
But the devil take that woman,  
Yeah, for you know she tricked me easy

 

Musha rain dum a doo, dum a da  
Whack for my daddy, oh  
Whack for my daddy, oh  
There's whiskey in the jar, oh

 

He couldn’t say why he choose ‘Whiskey in the jar’. Maybe, because Madam Hydra tricked him easy?

One of the girls laughed.  
"Your turn," he said.  
“Are you kidding?”  
“Nah. You sang very well. Shouldn’t have stopped because of me.”  
She said something in Arabic - apparently translated his words for her cellmates. They whispered again.  
“We heard that you feel bad.”  
"Honestly, if you sing, I will feel better."  
“Are you kidding?”  
"I'm almost kidding. I have few options: listen to you or to my body. You are much more pleasant.”  
“Are you American?”  
So, HYDRA’s crewmen are not chatty. Or maybe only two people are aware of Nomad’s identity: Madame Hydra and her dragon Khalid, a Muslim, but not an Arab.  
“Yes.”  
“You are a spy? Are you on a mission?”  
Could she be a stool pigeon? Or just frightened into submission? Yes, she could…  
“The less you know, the easier you sleep. Sorry.”  
"The spy would say the same thing."  
“Right. How many of you are in this box?”  
“Eight. It is big but seems very crowded, almost always dark and stinks.”  
“Same. Except that I am alone here. Can you tell me your names?”  
“What for?”  
"If I get out, I'll come back for you."  
"If," the girl laughed unhappily.  
"When," he corrected himself. "When I get out."  
"You'll never get out. We all saw how they beat you. We hardly believe you are still alive.”  
“I like to surprise people. What's your name? I am Steve.”  
“Ravan. Why am I telling you this?”  
"Ravan what?"  
“Ravan El-Hanash.”  
They began to tell names, he memorized. Marina Khasan, Rima Zubaidi, Noura Ali... Zozan, Chania, Biriban, Majdolin...  
"Ravan, can you talk to the girls from the next box and find out their names?"  
"They beat us if we talk too loudly. We will be beaten if they hear us talking to you.”  
"But they do not beat you if you sing?"  
“No. Sometimes they even ask us to sing... wait. I understand what you want.”  
They whispered again, and then started a song — a very rhythmic, seemingly endless, with an incredibly sticky chorus "Alla, Alla, ya-baba, ve-salam ‘alek ya-baba."  
While they were singing and talking, he managed to get to the bottle of water and have some drink. It cost him two seizures of cramps, but it was worth it.

"Hey," the two girls sang another song, and Ravan rapped softly on the wall. "Are you alive there, Steve?"  
“I'm listening to you.”  
"I do not know why I'm doing this. You must have forgotten our names already.”  
"Ravan El-Hanash," he said. “Marina Hasan...”  
"Enough," she said in the middle, but he spoke right up to Majdolin al-Kamishli, just to be sure.  
“I cannot believe it.”  
"I told you I like to surprise people."  
“Well, now I forgot those names that I was told.”  
"Do not panic, you will remember. Surely someone of your box have the same names.”  
“Yes, there is one more Noura. Noura Safadi, I remembered! And Anisa al-Khatib...”  
He pulled out of her all the names, using the associations and hints from other girls. Now he knew sixteen names.  
“Ravan, do me a favor... When they take me out, talk to the girls next to the nearest box. Remember their names. For me.”  
“You are crazy.”  
"You have no idea how crazy I am."

If she did not recede at the last moment and got a blow not in the forehead, but in the bridge of her nose, Rogers would have killed her.  
Ophelia remembered this every time, looking in the mirror and seeing a bruise that covered her forehead and spilled over her brow to creep into the eye sockets.  
The fact that Rogers had to pay a heavy price for it, did not console her at all. And then her periods started. No, she did not expect to get pregnant from the first shot, it was not the proper day of the cycle, but still it was aggravating.  
She took painkillers, hid a bruise under a silk kerchief, wore dark glasses and showed on the deck only in the dark so that her subordinates could not see her beaten.  
Khalid was on pins and needles. She knew why. It was assumed first that in Hurghada she would leave the ship and board the plane to Geneva. In their case, an unwritten rule worked: each lieutenant has the right to its own minor side jobs, until they pays their tribute and make no foul-ups. Of course, the loss of the ship and all the booty was a serious foul-up, but this foul-up was shut down, so Khalid had the right to his wheelings and dealings with no host's eye above him.  
"Have you decided whom will you sell him?"  
“What's the matter? Cannot wait to get rid of me?”  
"Mansur snores like a boar."  
Ophelia smirked. She evicted Khalid from the captain's cabin, and now he shared the room with his assistant.  
"You'll have to bear with him. I decided to stay at least until Jakarta.”  
"Because of Rogers?"  
“Yes,” she was not going to explain anything to her subordinate, let alone excuse herself.  
“This is called "keeping the wolf by the ears". As long as you hold on, everything seems to be all right, only your hands are busy. But when you let him go…”  
"You decided to tell me what to do?"  
“How could I. But the star shines not on my forehead.”  
"Khalid, when we capture the cargo, you and your boys take some women and do as they please. I captured Rogers and I'll sell him, but before it’s done I will have him as I want.”

Khalid grunted. He was not a particularly good Muslim, he did not even try to find any religious excuse for his actions. Ophelia knew the hypocrites, who drank alcohol only after dark, fucked only non-Muslims or "wrong" Muslim women, and boys because they are “not men yet” and thus don’t count. Khalid was not one of those. He drank whenever he wanted to, ate what he wanted, fucked anyone he wanted, if he did not expect the extra profit from virginity, and specialized strictly in women, not because of religious prohibitions, but because he was heterosexual. Ophelia never saw him at the prayer, although he could, if necessary, pretend to be more devout than Mohammed and talk about the Koran, selling a batch of missiles or tanks to the next fanatic. As she herself, if necessary, wore a burka.

But now, if she correctly read the body language, something deep was hurt. And if not religion, then what?  
"Khalid, if you have a private deal on the way somewhere, then I will not interfere," she said peacefully.  
“It's not that.”  
“Then what?”  
Khalid inhaled and exhaled. She knew that he did not want to piss her off and picked his words carefully.  
"He's Captain America. We are HYDRA.”  
“So what?”  
Khalid looked at her, as if she had said the greatest folly.  
"He killed Pierce."  
Ophelia sighed. Pierce, an old-school man, would disdain even to spit on someone like Khalid.  
"Was he dear to you?" Or it’s a principle?”  
“A principle. You were going to skin Nomad and send his hide to Israel. To teach everyone a lesson. Now that we know that he is Captain America, this is all the more necessary to do, just send the skin to Washington.”  
"The Russians give forty million for him. Together with the skin.”  
“This is the case when you need to forget about the benefits.”  
"No, Khalid, this is the case when you cannot forget about the benefits. Because the benefit is the principle.”  
Khalid continued to stand silently, as one of those stone bulls, which the orthodox idiots blew up in Mesopotamia. Oh, trouble, understood Ophelia. It seems that we have ideological differences here, and if I cannot convince him, I will have to kill him, which is very, very annoying.  
"Khalid," she said softly. “What are the principles of HYDRA?”  
"Order," he answered without hesitation. “End of chaos. Elimination of threats to humanity, internal and external.”  
"And for order to come, what should we do?"  
"To wreak havoc until people get tired of it and willingly surrender to us.”  
“How do we sow chaos? More precisely, by what means?”  
Khalid nodded.  
"The benefit is the principle, I understand."  
“Well done. Because Malik, for example, did not understand. A result? So many resources, so many years down the drain all just to feed the alien monster. And those were our resources. Are you not angered with such a waste?”  
Khalid sighed.  
"But you keep him not only for sale. You fell in love with him.”  
Ophelia nearly choked with air.  
“What? Khalid, do not disappoint me. I'm not saying that you fell in love with the chick you drag into your cot ...  
“Madhia.”  
"Yes, Madiha. Funny, you have remembered her name.”  
"It's more convenient than ‘hey, you’. And this is different.”  
“Why? Because you're a man, and I'm a woman?”  
Khalid hesitated. Ah, that's is the point...

“So, you can have fun, but I have to be higher than this? Or do you think that I cannot have fun when I take a man by force?”  
“I think that you, with your face, body and your money, do not need to take a man by force. You just need to crook your finger.”  
"Yes, it was like that," Ophelia agreed. "I crook a finger and men run after me on tiptoes. I did not understand what you guys find in rape. What a pleasure you can get with a body that does not want you openly. And I decided to try it.”  
She smiled and lowered her glasses so that he could properly see the bruise creeping out from under the scarf to the bridge of the nose and under the eyelids.  
"Khalid, now I understand you. This is a special, very special sensation. And you can get it only with someone who does not beckon at your finger. Who is interesting to break.”  
She lifted her sunglasses back, like a visor.  
“But it's not only that. He is the bearer of a unique genocode, which is considered the key to the serum of the super-soldier. I want this genocode. I want a child from him.”  
Khalid's expression was priceless.  
"You ..." he managed at last. "You've never been interested in biotechnology."  
"Khalid, do not be stupid. I do not need biotechnology, let the Russians fumble with the super-soldier serum. I need an heir. I had already booked a place in the best reproduction clinic and picked up a donor. I have released my schedule for this. But, dammit, Captain America — and a nameless himbo from the catalog... There's nothing to think about.”


	6. There will be blood

As is usual with the people who are totally not to blame, Scott Lang blamed himself. He was not with the squad when slavers captured Cap, or else he... actually, what? Decreased to the cellular level and knocked out every microbe?  
Natasha was annoyed because she did not have the strength to console Lang.

"Scott, stop worrying. Wake up and bolster.”  
She unfolded a three-dimensional holocart on the table: a map of the Mediterranean Sea in the region of Cyprus, covered with triangles off different colors.  
“That day the marked quadrant was crossed by one hundred and forty-two ships. We exclude small boats  and ships over a thousand units, we exclude all special ships and ships of the coastal zone, all passenger ships — and we still have sixty-seven.”  
By her word, orange, red, yellow and green triangles vanished. Only the whites remained.  
"And five of us to check them all?" Scott asked.  
"Simpler than that," Natasha smiled. “Look at the pattern. The first ship that we captured...”  
"Released," Sam corrected.  
"…We released, it was a passenger ship, decommissioned for scrap and followed to the port of destination under own steam. The company it belonged to is an offshore dummy. The captain, during the interrogation by the Greek police, said that captured people had to be transferred to a dry cargo ship “handysize” class under the flag of Liberia, which’s name he did not know, he was given only coordinates. After, he was going to bring his trough to Marseilles and trade for scrap. He was hired for one passage, with a "skeleton crew". "Plague Ship", which captured Steve, had the same story: it was bought in Russia for scrap, by some offshore company reregistered in Belize, manned with a minimal team of some goners and sent, according to documents, to Marseille."

  
Lang nodded as a sign that he was listening attentively, but Nat could see from his eyes that he had lost the thread.  
“Ask.”  
"So what are we looking for? Passenger ships bought for scrap? Or…?”  
“We are looking for dry cargoes of the "handysize" or "handymax" type in long-term freight. And the connection with the old passenger ships, bought for scrap and driven to Marseilles. Where their routes cross, there is our man. Or people.”  
Scott looked at the team.  
"Guys, I want to return Steve as much as any of you. But when it comes to digging in papers or files, I’m of no use. Sorry. That is, I do not give up my part of the work, if necessary, I'll sit with you and dig in files... But I'm terribly afraid to mess things up.”  
Natasha exchanged glances with Clint and Sam, and smiled at Scott.  
“Don’t worry. We pulled you out of Prague precisely on your profile. We need you to get into the jail for this captain, Lucas Cephaloyani, and talk to him.”  
“Wasn’t he already interrogated?”  
“It seems to us that he did not say everything to Interpol investigators.”  
"Mmm... how tough I must be?"  
"I do not care about his health. He is an accomplice in the massacres and slave trade. If you punch him in kidneys, as you punched me at the airport, I will not cry for him.”  
"Deal," Scott nodded. "And if he does not know anything?"  
"We'll spend more time with the paperwork" Natasha glanced from under her red forelocks, so that Scott decided to do his best to get the captain to talk.

 

…Cephaloyani was cooperative so Scott did not have to punch him in the kidneys.

"He knows something, but not so much. He knew the name of the ship. He did not say it to the police, for fear of his employers. I explained to him clearly that his employers could get to him or not, but I am already here. He immediately believed I could reduce his penis to a micron.”

"It's not that he'll need his dick in the next ten years," Sam said.

Scott glanced at him, but said nothing. Falcon clearly believed that a few days in Raft give him the right to think that he knows the prison life. Another time, Scott would dispel his illusions, but now he was not up to it.

"The ship is called “Matilda”, the handicase class, with a capacity of 500 units, under the flag of Liberia," he concluded.

Wanda immediately rushed to the computer. A minute of waiting on the "Sea Traffic" — and the girl's eyes glowed happily.

"They're in Karachi now!"  
"That is, we know for sure that there is no Steve in Karachi," Clint said. “This is the ship that did not get its load of slaves and moved further. We do not need it, we need its owners.”  
"But don’t they..." Wanda stopped.

"Don’t they know, on the ship, who hired them? No," Clint snapped. "I mean, somebody, maybe, knows something, a trifle, and if you beat everyone long enough, you can put together a whole picture from what they say. But this is a waste of time. In such cases, performers do not know anyone except the next link. Unless you want to fly to Karachi and get some moral satisfaction, putting nightmares in their heads...”  
"I would have the moral satisfaction of tearing them in halves," Wanda said. "But you're right, we will not spend time and money on this. Accounting, then?”

"Accounting," Clint nodded and took on his laptop. "We need to know everything about this Matilda."

Scott plunged into an unfamiliar environment: sea trade, charters, freights... Clint was a thorough teacher.

"Look, man," he explained, "no one writes ‘slaves and drugs’ in the ship's declaration. They are carrying some legal cargo. Machines, washing powder, spare parts for cars, children's toys, household appliances... They have decks and holds filled by containers of legal cargo. Only among them a dozen containers with illegal cargo is stuffed. Now tell me: if you were a drug dealer or a trafficker, how would you hide the leaves in the forest?”  
Scott was an honest crackman and stayed away from drug traffickers and pimps in prison. More precisely, he stayed away from shitty people, and it turned out that all the drug bugs and traffickers were shit. Scott had never thought about this fact before, but, in truth, even among the murderers, you could meet people with dignity. But not among those.  
Now he understood why.

He thought about the purely technical aspect of solving the problem: how to place several dozen slaves in the hold, for the team not to know about it?  
There was no way. The team must be in the know and in the mix.

But you can not just hire such people by ad on job search sites, like "A slave shipper requires a qualified psychopath ship mechanic". So, you need to hire a ship without a crew and man it with your people. Is there such an option?

"Yes," said Clint. “It's called "bareboat charter". This is how "Matilda" wss hired: annual freight without a crew. The charterer incurs all expenses for the maintenance of the vessel, insurance, fuel and so on. He also recruited a team.”

According to the "Sea Traffic" data, out of sixty-seven dry cargo carriers of the "handysize" class in bareboat charter, there were... twenty-eight of them at the right time in the right place. Strike me pink!

It turned out to be the bad times for the shipowners: the freight price of the container has fallen more than twice, and everyone was trying to throw off the costs of depreciation of the vessel, fuel, maintenance of the team... So, the companies were sacking qualified seamen and renting out ships to unscrupulous carriers who were recruiting the Africans, Asians, Georgians, Russians very cheap...

"So who's the freighter?"  
“‘Sunrise’ Trading company, registered in the Bahamas. Another dummy.”  
"But it belongs to someone!"  
“Yeah, ‘UniTrade Corporation’, Hong Kong. If Google does not lie to us, this ‘UniTrade’ is registered in some kind of doghouse in the slums. These dummies are shellgame. What could be real?”  
Scott thought about it.  
“Fuel. Water. Repairs. Some real things, for which you have to pay real money.”  
“Exactly. The ‘Matilda’, before leaving for the Mediterranean, refueled and loaded in Istanbul. And here again we need your specific skills. It is necessary to break the office of the refueler and find out where the money came from."

Clint handed to Scott the flash drive, which probably had some kind of Trojan.  
Scott sighed. You'll start a new life, they said. Break away from the crime, they said ...  
“Remember: I do this only for Cap,” he said and took the flash drive.

 

Steve was still pretty groggy when he realized he understood the fluent Arabic speech.

For some reason, there was always something ludicrous about him getting into fluent foreign speech. For example, the entrance to the Italian happened when they were pinned down by fire in the Garigliano Valley, and the Italian guerrilla guides began to quarrel violently about the best way to retreat, abundantly seasoning their speech with colorful obscenities. Steve found suddenly with surprise that he understands not only every cuss, but everything else. That time, he was still a very straight Catholic boy, and if occasional "culo" or "cazzo" slipped from someone, he let it go, but when it was a comma from the name of Holy Mother or Lord, he found that annoying, not to say infuriating. He concentrated and said with seemingly quiet, but well trained voice that “questo e non proprio tempo a demonstrare il temperamento Italiano”. The impressed Italians shut up. Not for long, however, they could not keep silence for long. But since they knew he understood them, they held back their tongues.

  
Under what circumstances he spoke French first, he preferred not to recall. Not even because he saw a woman tattered, bareheaded and stripped off, but because he himself lost his temper and screamed at the French men, and even hit a certain zealous morality defender quite violently, and then there were problems with the French commanders, for which Phillips ingeniously scolded him till cows came home.

And now, well, right into the collection: first, through the delirium, he heard only an indistinct mumbling, and then he realized that Ravan and Noura were quarreling. Ravan was anti-Assad, Noura had been rather moderate, but as military horrors escalated, she increasingly blamed the opposition and the rebels, and now she found nothing better than to throw her horror, pain and humiliation at Ravan. Since Ravan hates Assad so much, why did she run? She should stay there and fight, why should others die for her?

  
"Hey," Steve called. “Now things are equally bad for everyone here. Do not make them worse for yourself and others.”  
And only after that he realized that the girls were all the way talking in Arabic, and he also spoke in Arabic.  
“And you do not say anything!” Noura shouted. "You, the Americans, are to blame for everything. Why did you come to Iraq? Who asked you? You always talk about freedom and democracy, but you only make everything worse.”

"And that's always this way," said Bucky from his corner. “Who cares if you slept through all those years? Captain America is to blame for everything that your country did and did not do.”

“You're a fool!” Ravan told to her cellmate. "He is here because he wanted to save us!"  
“Well done! I'm just happy!”

"Break," said Steve in English for Ravan. “Help me translate; I lack words. These... freaks need you to become enemies for each other. Such people as them… they have been doing this for a long time. They did it in concentration camps. People who got there should think it was forever. Thint that freedom will never come. But the day came — and we... and the Allies liberated the camps. Not everyone lived up to this day. But you know what? Those who succumbed, whom they made into...”  he stopped, choosing a proper word instead of...  
"Muslims," Ravan said. "I know that those who succumbed were called Muslims. I am not offended, it's not you who invented it.”  
"Yes," Steve swallowed. "The obedient died first. It may seem that accepting the rules of the game meant surviving. But no. It was quite the opposite.”  
"You saw it yourself, did you?" Ravan asked.  
"You think I'm so old?"  
Ravan lowered her voice.  
"I think you're Captain America."

"A great conspirator," Baki clapped his hands. With a metal hand, it sounded unnatural.  
“Who told you…”  
"You get tortured every day, but you do not give up. You learned Arabic in a week and remembered all our names from the first time. You talk about that war as if you were there... You're tall, you have blond hair and blue eyes... And your name is Steve.”  
“Steve is quite a common name…”  
"When you're raving, you argue with a man named Tony. Tony Stark, right?”  
Steve sighed.  
"I'm not Captain America," he said. “Cross my heart.”  
"Because you were stripped of this title, right? I saw the news. They took away your shield.”  
"C'mon, tell her already," Bucky snorted. "Anyway, your plan not to give them false hopes went to rub.”  
"No one took it," Steve said. "My friend said that I am not worthy of this shield. I agreed and gave it up.”  
“Why?”  
"Because he was right. I'm not worthy.”  
" _Povelo kota na blyadki_ ," said Bucky in Russian, looking away. "You are not worthy, because between a man and a drop-out, you chose a drop-out."  
Steve could not close his face, the chain was too short, not to mention how his wrists and ankles were affected by the braces. He had some plans to stagger this chain, but the body asked to postpone these plans for later.  
"Listen," he said, not quite understanding whether he talks to Ravan or Bucky. “Sometimes there is only a choice between bad and very bad. For example, between ‘offend a friend for good’ and ‘throw a friend to death.’”  
"Sometimes there is no choice," Ravan said.  
"Sometimes," Steve agreed. He was too tired to say pathetic nonsense like "there is always a choice". Especially in the presence of Bucky. "But more often... more often... they're just trying to convince you. Look, now you can not get out of this box. But sooner or later you will leave this place. You have hands to fight, legs to run and a voice to call for help. They know it. And they use this moment, now, to make you forget about it. Forget about the choice. Forget that you are a human.”  
"Why are you talking to him?" said Noura. "We’ll all be punished because of you!"  
"Shut up, you fool," Ravan answered.  
"Ravan, don’t. Let her scold me as she pleasees, words do not leave bruises.”  
"I cannot stand her any longer! Her and her kind! If they did not keep silent, when people were killed, if they did not quake with fright, Bashar would have run off to his Shiite friends or hung like Saddam!”  
Oh, my... Judging by the sounds, a fisticuff started in the next container.  
Heavy boots rumbled over the gangplank. Two pairs. Steve cursed under his breath and sat up.  
"Not a good idea," commented Bucky, seeing what he was going to do.  
“No. It was a bad idea to heat this chain with a blowtorch. Do you know what overtempered iron does?”  
“Leave you burns where it touches you?”  
“Breaks.”  
A latch rang out. The screams of the fighting women shifted into cries of pain.

"Silence, bitches!" Steve recognized the voice of the mulatto, who spoke with a French accent. “Silence and sit quiet, or I break your legs!”  
"You're going to faint," Bucky said.  
"What’s new?" Steve stepped on the chain that connected the anklets and the bracelets, wrapped the upper part of it around his hands and jerked hard.  
He had not enough strength. In his usual shape, Steve would have easily done with such a chain. On a bet. For a Coke can. But thas was before a two-week course of fasting and daily torture. He tried many times to break this chain before it was overheated. It did not work out.

But good Lord, he was angry.  
"It's not the right time," Bucky shook his head. Steve put too much effort into the effort to answer.  
When he almost blacked out, and his hands began to refuse, the chain tore with a loud ring, and inertia threw Steve back onto the floor. With an incredible effort, he stayed concious. Hold, breathe, drive oxygen into the brain overloaded with pain... Well, now roll over on your stomach, pull your legs under yourself and — how was Natasha joking? “And now we’ll try to get off the ground with all this crap”?  
"You're still going to fight, right?"  
"How I need your unquenchable optimism..." Steve straightened, leaning against the wall and rapping at it with his fist.  
"Hey, you bastard!" He shouted in French. The massacre of the innocents behind the wall stopped, only the quiet crying of the girls was heard.  
"Yes, I'm talking to you, bastard," Steve repeated. And he added a few colorful characteristics in the best traditions of the Marseilles tenderloin districts.  
"Did they hit you over the head?" the mulatto sounded almost good-naturedly.  
"He wants us to do it to put him right out," prompted a more intelligent comrade. “Don’t mind it.”  
“I do not mind,” the lock clicked and the mulatto stepped inside.  
Steve hit him in the throat with half-open hand, then pushed him under his mate’s truncheon. Then he blocked the truncheon with the chain, twisted it out of enemy’s hand, and used it to club the goon between his eyes. Then he fell on his knees beside the shapeless sacks of both bodies. Checked their pulses. Gave them the neck-twist of misery. Leaned against the container. Breathe. Do not forget to breathe.

They had no weapons, except truncheons. A shame. Albeit it was logical: for frightened women nothing more is needed, and what you do not have, could not be taken away.

His vision cleared a little, and he noticed that the door of the neighboring container was open and the girls crowded at the exit, not daring to get up from their knees. Two of them immediately pulled kerchiefs on their faces, and he realized that he was completely naked.  
"Yes," he tried to smile. "One total haram."  
The third girl took her kerchief off — it was a meter and a half long and rather wide — and handed it to him.  
"Thank you." He didn’t take her shawl, instead he unwrapped the shemagh off the neck of the killed mulatto and covered himself. "Ravan?"  
She nodded. She looked fifteen, no more.  
“Can I go with you?” she asked  
“There is no point. Get back into the container. I'll close you. If worst comes to worst, you have nothing to do with it. If everything goes well, I'll come back for you.”  
"Steve!" Ravan made an appealing gesture. "If you let us all out, we'll make a mess! While they will drive us back, you will manage to do something...”

  
...When Liu Bang was surrounded by Xiang Yu's troops, he ordered his concubines to dress like soldiers, gave them weapons and threw them into a breakthrough in one direction, while he with his bodyguards left in another. He won and became an emperor. History says nothing about the women’s fate.

  
“No. There are many objections, but I will give you one thing: each of you can become a hostage.”  
"They can take us hostage anyway!" said the smart girl.  
“Not if you show yourself. For a while, at least.”  
Speaking to her, he searched the pockets of the dead. Neither the keys to the handcuffs, nor the matches, not even the lousy toothpick. Bad. However, when he was dragged to interrogation, he managed to notice something like a guardhouse, where the wardens rest, watching the hold. Hopefully, there's something there.  
He looked Ravan in the eye and said as convincingly as possible:  
“Better for you to stay here. There will be blood.”  
Ravan nodded and stepped back into the container.

“Pray for me. I will need it badly.”

“We will.”

He closed the bolts. Then dragged the the corpses into the other container, and began to undress the bigger one.  
"There are thirteen more of them there," Bucky reminded him. "Including a woman whose combat training is no worse than redhead’s.”  
“Natasha. The redhead's name is Natasha.”

For some reason he wanted Bucky to remember it, albeit he knew Bucky was not real.  
After tying the mercenary's gear into a compact knot, Steve began to get out of the hold. The ship was not one of that superfreuters, where the containers lay in ten rows in a hold and five rows on a deck, the hold was not fully loaded, and the stairs between the rails counted four spans. The foot chain did not allow making normal steps, and the handcuffs pervented him from holding properly for the banister.  
Steve chose not the ladder, by which he was dragged to the torture chamber each day, but the other one, on the opposite side.   
"Look," said Bucky, pointing his finger down.  
Looking there, Steve saw a half-effaced arrow on the floor and an inscription "Workshop".  
He started the descent.  
The workshop, fairly neglected, turned out to be the Ali Baba’s cave.

Steve instantly saw the sidecutters on the toolbar and freed himself from shackles. He got dressed, tied the shemagh over his head.

And even these pirates had the first aid kit in the workshop, so he lubricated his burned wrists and ankles not with engine oil, but with an antiseptic healing gel, and covered them with elastic bandages. Still, he could not tie his shoes. Steve tore off the shoelaces and hoped that the shoes will keep on his feet. And God’s grace, there was a kettle, a tin of coffee and a sugar in the workshop. "Knives," said Bucky, pointing to the toolbar.

"Yeah, you're a fan of the knives,” — Steve took the instrument knife, pushed out the blade, shook his head.

“What’s wrong? You don’t need to sharpen it. And you can break it in the wound. Splendid.”

“That's for one time. And then you either change the blade or throw it away.”

"Well, I said ‘splendid’, not ‘perfect’. Take the machete then.”

Steve took the machete and weighed it in his hand. It felt good. “There will be blood...” He made a belt loop and fastened the machete to his belt. Then he took from the toolbar the hammer on the long handle.

"Not like Thor’s favorite toy," Baki snorted. “But will do. I remember you like the blunt weapons.”

Steve did not like blunt weapons, he just knew that killing a man with a knife with no sound is almost impossible unless you come from behind and cut his throat. But with a hammer, you can silence anyone from any position. He threw the remains of his chains into some box, finished his coffee and left the workshop through another door, lifting the shemaghs over his face.

This door led to a confusing space, crammed with iron boxes from ceiling to floor in all directions.  Judging by the menacing image of the skull and lightning on the boxes, they were transformers.

In the next room he met a man. The room was something between the warehouse and the office: on the metal shelves lay various housewares, and under the wall at the door was a table with a computer and a series of folders-segregators on a shelf. The man sat at the table. When he saw Steve, he asked: "Hey, what are you doing here?" and reached under his belt for a gun. Steve yanked him out of the chair by the throat and hit him hard against the floor, beating the life out. Then Steve took his gun, stuffed the body under the rack and sat down at the computer.

Unfortunately, only the files relating to the legal cargo were in the open. Unfortunately, they were in Turkish. But the plan of the ship hung over the table, and it was printed, fortunately, in English.

"Abyssinian," Baki read aloud.

Files of the crew were in English, too. Most of the crew members were Vietnamese. Not all of them — for example, the late mulatto was a French citizen, Mohammed Vial, the second mate. Neither Madame Hydra nor her dragon Khalid were listed.

"Where now? To the bridge?"

"Yes."

Steve got up from the computer and went out through the door that led, as he knew now, to the staircase.

His eyes seemed to be accustomed to the light of the under-deck rooms, but the light outside was excruciating, so that Steve backed away for a moment and covered his eyes with the shemagh. Then he again climbed out into the light, blinking under his kerchief, and looked around the corner.

Three silhouettes loomed in the glass cabin, one of them familiar ad nauseam: Khalid. Steve took a pistol from under his belt.

"Nah," said Bucky. “This is the Russian PSM gun, you'll only break the glass from this distance and make an alarm. Believe me, I've been shot at with this shit countless times...”

Steve gave it a thought and agreed. He pocketed the gun and moved carefully to the deckhouse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Povelo kota na blyadki (literally - a tomcat goes a-whoring) is a Russian saying that means "Here we go again".


	7. No blood, no tears

He crossed the open space with calm step, hiding a hammer in his sleeve, and a gun under his shirt. If somrone saw him from the bridge, they were not interested.  
In the first room, where he pushed the door, he had to stop and take a breath. Here they used to drag him for interrogations. It was something like an auxiliary workshop, for any small repairs that don’t requre going to the large workshop under the deck. Apparently, Khalid chose this place because of a solid workbench, to which someone could be tied down. And because of the bracket, on which someone could be tied up. And because of such convenient things as a solder, a hammerlock and a battery terminal.  
The blowtorch was still on the bench.  
"Take it," Bucky advised. "Bring some poetic justice into this world."  
"Get lost." Steve went back to the corridor and closed the door behind him. Move ahead.  
No one was in the dining room, in the galley, or in the gym. Bad sign.  
"Bad sign," said Bucky. “Upstairs. Or no. Search the fridge. You definitely have to fight, and you're barely on your feet.”  
Yes, that sugar, which he had swelled into coffee, clearly already burned out. Fast carbohydrates are so fast.  
In the fridge there was nothing you could just throw in your mouth and proceed. Except that…  
"Milk jam," Bucky frowned. “Another portion of fast carbon. How can it heal holes in you? There will be holes, I promise. Which day does your body consume itself?”  
"Time is precious," Steve put the empty can on the table and walked out of the dining room onto the stairs.  
The captain's cabin was on the second deck. Steve sharply pushed the door, holding the gun ready, but there was no one inside. Bad. Having Madame Hydra a hostage would simplify the task.  
Just in case, he looked into the refrigerator.  
"To hell with weight-loss obsessed broads," Bucky commented on a set of fruits and smoothies.  
From the nearby cabin came the sound of a washout in the toilet. Steve silently shut the refrigerator, slipped out of the door, stepped silently into the next cabin. He waited until the door handle moved, and when someone opened it, with a sharp blow of the foot he pushed it back, into the outcomer’s forehead. A mariner fell back on the toilet, and Steve jerked the door open and held a machete to his throat.  
"Are you nuts?" a mariner muttered, but then realized that it was not the cattain’s mate before him, and a moment after he sorted out who was in front of him. He whimpered softly.  
"Look, I did not do anything bad to you," he whispered in a low voice. "I dislike it, but nobody asks me. This Khalid, the captain does everything he says, no one dares even to squeak to him or this one, green-haired. I'm just a mechanic, engine is my business. Do you think it's so easy to find a job? When I realized what I was getting into, it was too late. In the sea there is no way out of the ship...”

He did not lie, due to the list of the crew he really was a mechanic.  
"Why leave him alive?" Baki gave a voice. "All he could say, you already know. You just waste time on him.”  
"How many people are here on the ship?" Steve asked. “Minus the crew?”  
“Thirteen.”  
This was consistent with Steve’s observations. He pushed the mechanic with his open palm on the forehead, banging his head against the wall. The man went limp. Steve closed the latrine and propped the door with a chair. Whether the mechanic was alive or not, he was not interested.  
"Wrong," said Bucky. "This is clearly not his first flight with slaves. He justified himself, and did not mention women. The world would be a better place, had you got rid of him.”  
Steve, without answering, left the cabin, and checked the next one. It was empty.  
"It all looks bad." Bucky looked in the next. “Where does the crew rest after the watch?”  
Steve did not know the answer to the question, but he really would like to know.  
Footsteps rumbled down the ladder. Steve flattened against the wall so that he could not be seen in the porthole. Behind the glass flashed Khalid’s predatory profile.  
"First the radio, then we'll clean this homo erectus," said Bucky. Steve gritted his teeth, and nodded. He went to the stairs. He did not go up, he jumped over the railing from the span to the span, so they did not see him from the wheelhouse.  
"After the first shot, you'll have less than a minute to do the rest," said Bucky.  
Steve looked into the wheelhouse. One of the bandits was looking at the door, the other was talking to the radio. Both were armed. Steve took the machete out.  
"Bad, bad idea," commented Bucky.  
"Another county heard from…"  
...Eight seconds after he stood in a blood-splashed wheelhouse and wiped his hands with a shemagh. One of the dead was the second watch officer Paolo Melo, the other was not listed, Steve remembered him only by interrogations. Steve dragged them aside so as not to stumble, collected their weapons and ammo so that they were at hand, and took up to the navigation equipment.  
There were some unfamiliar devices, but, fortunately, nothing fundamentally new compared to the yacht on which he learned navigation. Glory to progress and GPS, which replaced sextants. Now he knew that the “Abyssinian” was about thirty miles north of the Maldives heading for Madaveley.  
He took a walkie-talkie and sat down in the navigator's chair, so as not to stick in sight, but at the same time keep the nose and stern in view. Hen he started to tune the radio to the right frequency.  
“Nomad calls Ronin. Nomad calls Ronin. Over.”  
Pause. Come on, Clint! Natasha!  
“Nomad calls Ronin. Do you copy? Over.”  
What if... Steve gasped, leaned back in his chair. Is it outer noise or ringing in the ears?  
"If the guys were blasted, Khalid would not miss an opportunity to boast," said Bucky.  
Steve chilled out a bit.  
"Nomad, this is Ronin!”

A wild, almost painful joy burst in the chest, throat tightened. For a second or two, Steve could not speak. Quite a mistime.  
"Nomad, where are you? Go ahead! Over.”  
“Coordinates one-fifteen-thirty-one north...”  
The ship slowed down so sharply that inertia threw Steve on the dashboard, he barely had time to put his hands up. Inertia flicked forward a few more seconds, then let go. Radio fell silent. Navigation instruments died.  
_"Posledniy korablik ostyl, posledniy fonarik ustal."_ Bucky added a few more Russian words, rising from the floor.  
Steve picked up the unknown dead man’s "Kalashnikov", slug it on his back, crouched, got out of the wheelhouse and jumped up to the top platform.  
There was a chaise longue, a picnic table and a refrigerator basket. Apparently, Madame Hydra loved to sunbathe.  
Steve fell to the hot surface, took the position so that the stairs were at twelve, the nose by three, the tail by nine. Thirty cartridges in the store, eight in the clip of the pistol. Come and take me. Nothing could spoil the joy. Nothing.  
He heard a bang of steps on the stairs, then some clumsy attempt to go quietly, then a quarrel downstairs, partly in broken English, partly in Arabic — who is to go upstairs.  
"See the black markings on the bullets?" Bucky made zero effort to keep low. “Increased target penetration.”  
Someone who was particularly clever raised his rifle above the railing and made several shots at random. Steve figured out where his body would be and pulled the trigger. A scream, a crash of falling and a continuation of howls from below showed that the target penetration was really excellent.  
"And now they will take advantage of this ammo trait."  
Steve crawled back, rolling slightly to the side. Bullets perforated wheelhouse roof in front of him. Steve was lying without a move: there was no way to get him from the stairs. When they exhausted the queue was, he switched to the bursts shooting mode, rolled forward and, having raised to his knee, gave a short burst towards the stairs. Groans and cries again. Then they retreated.

"Rogers!" a woman's voice called from the stern.  
Steve turned, again crouching on the roof, and saw that Madame Hydra was not going to shoot. In any case, not at him.  
She stood on the stern superstructure, holding a plump girl in a light gray trouser suit in front of her and aiming at her head.  
Steve pressed the butt into his shoulder, took aim, exhaled...  
"From Kalash, at this distance?" Bucky sat down beside him. “Do not take chances. If you care for the girl, I mean.”  
Steve continued to aim. He knew the green witch saw him.  
Madame Hydra smiled and pushed the girl hard. The girl yelped and flew overboard. Madame Hydra, in turn, fell behind the stern superstructure.  
Steve cursed, threw down his submachine gun and, after a short run, hurled himself into the water.  
The ocean struck him in the face, tore off his shoes, burned all his wounds and spat him on the surface. In the Red Sea, the water was saltier, but not much. Steve was about sixty meters away from the girl, and he prayed that she would stay on the surface until he reaches her.  
People drowning in the sea are most often ruined by fear. If the girl calmed down and just laid on the water, she could easily stay afloat for hours and more. But she thrashed around, floundered, screamed, choked — and while Steve, squeezing everything out of himself, swam ovrarm strokes in her direction, she spluttered and went down.  
Steve plunged. The ocean was transparent, but his eyesight darkened again, and the light gray patch of the shirt disappeared when Steve was already quite close and reached his hand out. He continued to push his body forward and down, and his hand touched hair, long as seaweed.  
Wrapping the locks around his fist, Steve was about to push up... and realized that he had forgotten where “up” was. The blood mounted to his eyes, it was drumming in his ears with rumble and ringing, and in the dense zero gravity the vestibular failed. And there came the thought: yes, maybe it's for the better, for both of them. It will only get worse if you survive, so why not just open your mouth and let yourself into bitterness and salt of all the tears of the world...  
“Are you completely out of your mind?” said Bucky.  
Steve pulled the girl to him, wrapped his arms around her, relaxed the whole body, except for this grip... And the water pushed him up — slowly, smoothly, unstoppable.  
Having pierced a surface with his head, he cleared his throat and lay down, holding the girl's head above the water on his shoulder.  
Salt water, unlike fresh, causes a spasm in the throat, and the drowning person gets it only in the nose and mouth, but not into the lungs. Once on the surface, the girl also coughed and gasped... and panicked again.  
Steve took her by the shoulders and shook so hard that her teeth clanged.  
"Noura?<"br /> She nodded.  
"Noura, remember. You. Are. Lighter. Than. Water. So hold on to me and lie down on the water. Do not be afraid. Yes. You see, it's easy." He looked toward the ship, which had already gone far enough. At the stern there was a scuffle, a boat was launched.  
"Look, they'll pick us up now."  
The girl burst into tears.  
“Yes, I know, there is not much good for us. But while we are alive, we can still do something. You understand me? Noura?”  
She nodded, then shook her head, never ceasing to sob. He had neither strength nor words of consolation. He just stayed on the water, held the girl and waited for the powerboat to come.  
Behind the wheel of the boat was Khalid, and his gaze promised... much. At the stern sat Madame Hydra, lifebuoy in her hands. But when the boat stopped with a turn and doused them with a wave, the woman did not hurry to throw it.  
"You know, Captain, I did not doubt in you a single second." Her smile was radiant, triumphant. "But when you rushed overboard, you did not know that the baby Noura herself asked me to let her go. As a reward for... for what, baby?” She switched to Arabic.  
Noura did not answer, her whimpers were quiet and monotonous.  
"Go ahead," the woman's voice was so sweet Steve's teeth ached. "Tell Captain how good you were. How did you raise the alarm, how did you start knocking on the walls of the container, as soon as you heard someone's steps. How you told us about his escape. If it were not for you, the captain had time to radio our coordinates to his friends, they would have come and killed us all, freed you... But you saved us! And you asked me to let you go, and I let you go. Stupid Captain America jumped into the water for you. Perhaps we will take him, and you... swim wherever you want.”  
“Nooo!” cried the girl. “Don’t! Do not leave me!”  
“What? Do not you want to be free?”  
"No-no!"  
"Do you want to return to the hold?"  
“Yes-ah!”  
"And will you behave yourself? And do everything we tell you?”  
“Yes-ah!”  
Madame Hydra smiled. She made a move, as if she was about to throw the lifebuoy. Naura started, but the buoy remained in Madame Hydra’s hands.

"One last question, girl. What should we do with Captain America?”  
Noura trembled, her gaze ranged between the boat and Steve.  
"He killed four people and injured several others," the woman said. "Do you think we should punish him or not?"  
"Yes," Noura sobbed.  
“Yes what?”  
“Yes you should.”  
"What are we supposed to do?"  
"You must punish him! Take me, I beg you! Please!”  
“And how do we punish him? Beat him?”  
Khalid looked Steve into eye and smiled.  
“Yes! Yes, beat him!” Noura’s voice broke.  
"Or is it better to kill him?" Madame Hydra specified, tapping her fingers on the lifebuoy.  
“Kill him! Kill, but take me back! Please!”  
"What do you say, Steve?" The woman bent her head. "She's clinging to you and claiming to kill you. How pathetic.”  
"As long as you are morally triumphant over a frightened child, I lose strength," Steve said calmly. “A little more triumph — and I'll go to the Davy Jone’s locker, she will drown too, and say goodbye to your money.”  
"Well, Steve, not everything in life is measured with money," Madame Hydra's smile became completely honey. “Such moments as this are priceless. Okay, the lesson is probably over.”  
She threw the buoy, and Noura grabbed at it with both hands.  
Thank God!  
Steve yanked a pistol from his belt and shot at the woman’s snake smile.  
The wet click of the striker - and the lock jammed.  
"You scum," Khalid said in Russian, and raised the harpoon.  
Steve saw the spearhead, approaching terribly slowly, like in a slow motion. He did not make a single attempt to dodge it. The pain that pierced his right shoulder felt first as a weight and sent him under the water. As a drowning whale. The water filled his mouth. No blood, no tears could make it saltier.  
And then he, like a whale, was pulled up on the line. He could not help himself clunging to the harpoon. He clung to it while he was dragged on the line to the ship, and only when the weight of his body was dragged from the water, hanging on the clavicle, his hands fell by themselves, for all his effort now was to breath. The brain could not process such an amount of pain signals along with any other information, so human speech seemed to be a muddle. There were two suns in the sky, both brown. The sky was yellow. The sea was red. Khalid stepped on his chest and yanked the harpoon, having turned it into the wound to release a hook from under the clavicle. Someone of the crew vomited. Khalid shouted something to him, but the words did not make sense until Madame Hydra, leaning towards him, poured some drinking water into his mouth. He spat to the side, did not drink, knew that this would only prolong the agony and put away the desired oblivion. But the reality still began to came to order somehow. Two suns merged into one, the sky became faded blue, and the movement of Madame Hydra’s lips turned into words:  
“Of course, he sent the coordinates. Unload the goods from the hold, make it ready for a momentary loading. Khalid, bring me the first aid kit.”  
Khalid did not move.  
"Khalid," Madame Hydra said in a very cold and calm voice.  
"He wanted to kill you."  
“Of course. To kill me, to grab a boat, run away with a girl. After all we did to him, we shouldn’t expect a bouquet of roses. Would you be so kind to bring a kit.”  
"Saida..." Khalid tilted his head.  
"I will not ask thrice," she could cut steel with her voice.  
Khalid turned around, bawled at his subordinates and disappeared in the superstructure. Steve noticed at last that Madame Hydra was pressing his wound with her kerchief.  
Having met his eyes, she smiled.  
“It was a good attempt. Yes, really.”  
"Why don't you just kill me?" he asked.  
"Because you're worth good money. And after what you've done, I just have to compensate for the loss of part of the cargo. Do you know what slavers did in the old days, when they were intercepted by a patrol English ship?”  
He closed his eyes. He knew. The slaves were tied to the anchor chain and thrown overboard.  
“Don’t...”  
"Will you beg me to spare these women?”  
"Will this help?"  
She laughed and saddled his hips.  
“Try it. Let’s see what happens.”  
"You will do as your interest demands," he said, his tongue tightening. “So… no.”  
“What a pity. I wanted to hear you pleading.”  
“Not today.”  
She laughed, grabbed his head with her hands, turned it to the left.  
"Look there, Steve. Open your eyes and look.”  
He opened his eyes. Above the horizon in the south-east hung a gray streak.  
"It's a stormfront, dear. It is coming here. And if your friends want to get us on their quinjet — they will fly right into this storm.”  
Clint is a good pilot, Steve thought. He will handle this...  
"But I will not leave anything to chance." She leaned towards his face, prudently pressing his head to the deck. "If your friends still manage to board, they will have a lot of work to do. So do not worry, I will not kill the women I'll leave here...”  
Now she pressed her lips in his ear.  
"I'll mop up the crew."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last little ship has cooled down  
> The last little lantern has tired
> 
> These are words from "My defence", the song of Russian poet and singer Yegor Letov.


	8. A Storm to Come

In the final analysis, only four ships met the required parameters: the Tien Gou, the Abyssinian, the Polar Sun and the Malamute. All four were container cargo ships, all four passed the necessary square within the indicated time period and at some point their routes crossed with old passenger ships going to be cut to scrap metal. All four refueled at the same terminal in Istanbul. All four carried cargo of the certain trading corporation "Dasan", the textile production equipment. So, they had the point to start from. Four ships could really be checked one by one.  
If it were not for one "but":  the Tian Gou followed to Xiamen, bypassing Africa from South with a stop in Douala and Durban, the Abyssinian — to Australia through Suez, Maldives and Jakarta, the Polar Sun — to Buenos Aires, and the Malamute — to Larvik.  
Natasha, who somehow suddenly took the command (no, no one appointed her as a successor to Steve, it just happened by itself) hesitated. The probability of mistake was three to one, and each mistake meant time lost. And that time may cost dearly to Steve.  
Natasha really, really did not want to do it, but ...  
"Good evening, agent Romanova "  
"Good evening, Your Majesty."  
T'Challa, as always, was dressed plainly, but elegantly. Natasha hoped she did not distract him from some royal business...  
“Something happened?”  
“Yes,” as short and as dry as possible, she told the story of Steve’s abduction. T'Challa listened, his face remained impenetrable.  
"... And here we can not do without your help," she concluded. “It is necessary to check upon the Tien Gou during the stop in Douala.”  
“Check?” The king tilted his head a little.  
“Unofficially. Black Panther style.”  
"And if the Black Panther does not find Captain there?"  
"He will certainly find something else. Weapons, drugs, slaves... All those ships are involved in the scheme. We will try to unravel all the threads and reach the center, but... Steve is our priority.”  
"It's arranged, agent Romanova," T'challa smiled. "Perhaps I will not even wait for the berth in Douala."

Natasha still could not understand whether he was flirting with her or not. This sometimes infuriated her, because most men were like an open book.  
The next call was to Maria Hill.  
"I hope you have something important," — well, who needs greetings between old acquaintances?  
“To Larvik via Dublin follows the container ship the Malamute. They may have Rogers as prisoner on board. We need to check two more ships, time is precious.”  
Maria bit her lip slightly.  
"How did you manage to squander Rogers?"  
“Did you see the news about the plague ship of refugees from Syria?”  
“Crimea-Congo virus? I saw.”  
"Steve was on that ship. He forbade us to disembark without means of bioprotection.”  
"It was almost two weeks ago. Why didn’t you apply earlier?”  
“We get on the trail only now. Four vessels. You take the Malamute. Will be in Dublin the day after tomorrow.”  
"We'll meet it."  
The screen went blank. Natasha lowered her hands to her knees. The third conversation promised to be the hardest.  
"If you want, I'll talk to him," Sam suggested.  
“I can handle it.”  
"If he would like to talk at all ..."  
"I'll try to... interest him. It's all right, Falcon. I'm not afraid to call him. I'm not afraid he’ll arrest Steve. Suppose he had us all arrested, just... I think, where to send him, the Abyssinian or the Polar Sun.  
"It will be easier for us to intercept the Abyssinian in the Maldives," Clint said. “The Polar Sun goes to Buenos Aires across the Atlantic, so...”  
And then the quinjet radio signaled the call.  
“Nomad calls Ronin...”  
Communication lasted for a few seconds, and interrupted unexpectedly. Hardly at Steve’s will.  
Natasha knew that something went wrong there, on that side of the world, but still she was happy as she was the day they've found Steve on the Potomac bank: wounded, mangled, but still alive. If this guy is alive, it's already half the battle won. It gives meaning to everything.  
Clint drove scrappy coordinates in the board computer. Somewhere North of the Maldives, the Indian Ocean.  
"So, it’s the Abyssinian after all," he said. “And they are romantics”.  
He straightened, as if the mountain fell from his shoulders.  
None of them wanted to call for Stark's help.

The Abyssinian was being ravaged by a storm whe they arrived.  
There was no hope to gain a foothold on the deck, so Clint, having dropped them off on the ship, had requested a landing on Thuraakunu.  
"Can you do something with this storm?" Natasha shouted to the Scarlet Witch. Wanda shook her head.  
“Then get inside! We need to check the entire ship for various unpleasant surprises!”  
“Like Crimea-Congo fever?” Sam specified.  
“Like armed bandits, mines in the engine room and open kingstones. And yes, maybe the Crimea-Congo fever.”  
Scott looked around in bewilderment.  
"How do they look, those kingstones?"  
"You'll know when you see it," Sam reassured. “There will be a hell of water.”  
A hell of water was nowhere to be found. Crew, too, was not found anywhere. They found only smashed navigational equipment, damaged electrical network and destroyed control system of the ship, twenty-three frightened women in a container in the hold, traces of gunfire in the wheelhouse and something else…  
"Guys," Scott said via earpiece. "I feel like vomoting right now."  
...It was a small cabin, converted to a subsidiary workshop. And there was blood everywhere. On the walls and on the ceiling — sprayed, as if someone sprinkled it with a big brush. On the workbench — stains and trickles. On the floor — dried puddles and prints of boots.  
The smell of burnt hair and flesh still hung in the air. Natasha was much used to almost everything, but that moment something rolled up to her throat.  
And just to leave no doubt, someone left on the workbench the "desert" army shoes of Dutch production, pinched by the sea water and suffuseded with bloody streaks.  
Steve’s boots.  
Falcon swore. Natasha went out into the corridor and touched Scott by the shoulder.  
"Can you bring the electricity to life?"  
“Yeah... I don’t know... I have to look, it all depends on...”  
"Come and see to it. Without electricity, we are wasted."  
They silently decided not to let Wanda in, send her to women — after all, only she, with her telepathy skills, could help interrogate those who did not speak English or French.  
And it turned out to be their biggest mistake. What they only guessed, Wanda saw.  
“They keelhauled him. And then all these women were forced to beat him. And not one of them refused. Not one. I do not want to comfort them and calm them down. I do not want to save them at all. Let's call Clint and leave them...”  
Intemperate youth speaking is so youthful. Natasha tried not to be irritated. She understood that Wanda had in many ways transferred to Steve her feelings for the deceased brother. She understood what it was like to have great power and acutely feel useless. But still it was hard to resist and not to yell Wanda. She had to meditate for more than half a minute over the gutted pulpit with the soldering iron brought in (yes, taken in that very closet) before she could calmly say:  
“First, those women, unlike us, are not fighters. Second, their rescue was our mission from the very beginning. We take a risk voluntarily, and they were simply snatched from normal life, bombed, fired and captured into slavery. It is foolish to expect heroism from them, and even more stupid to demand it. And finally, would Steve have abandoned them?”  
Wanda blushed. Natasha found out how to connect the two contacts, which must have been connected, and picked up a drop of solder on the hot rod. The smell of rosin very well repelled the memory of the smell of burnt flesh. "And I tell him politely: Petrov, do not you see that the molten tin drips onto your comrade’s head?" Steve was very fond of this joke.

"I need all the information you can get out of them. The ship's documentation has been destroyed, so we have no names, no faces, nothing. But maybe someone heard something. Those who are not accustomed to consider their victims as human beings, often talk a lot in their presence.”  
"I understand," Wanda said. "It's just ... it's hard with them. They ... are soaked with fear...”  
“Can you instill them with a little calmness and confidence?”  
"No," Wanda said with a wry smile. "I can only instill what I feel myself."  
"It's a pity." Natasha removed the strand of hair behind her ear and again bent over the smashed console, making it clear that the conversation was over.  
Scott managed to bring the generators to life, and Natasha — to resurrect the radio and contact Clint.  
"It's all bad," she said. "None of the captives saw anything, everyone was locked in containers." According to them, about half of them had already sold out, the youngest and most beautiful ones were taken somewhere, the rest were locked again. They do not know how Steve managed to escape, but someone heard the sounds of a fight. Judging by the holes in the superstructure roof and the words of the women, there was a skirmish. Someone was wounded, someone was killed, but there were no living or dead men on board — none of the crew, none of the raiders, only twenty-three slaves. Navigational equipment is smashed, the undercarriage barely pulls against the wind, no lifeboats, and the storm is growing stronger. We are carried to the northeast, towards Sri Lanka. I think to lie adrift and transmit a distress signal. Yes, I almost forgot. In the captain's cabin for a time lived a woman. Not a captive, if I remember correctly the cost of the "Ellipse" parfume. And what about you?”  
"Same ass, side view," Clint said. "I'm pinned to the ground by a hurricane, it's raining so much that I do not distinguish the nearest hangar. And God knows how long it will last. They effectively immobilized us, you can not help it. Do you think Steve is still alive?”  
"Yes," she answered confidently. “Undoubtedly.”  
“Why such confidence?”  
She swallowed a lump in her throat.  
"They left his shoes. In a plain view, all in blood.”

...Tattered corpse would be an even more eloquent message. But its absence also spoke volumes.  


“Fucking romantics”.  
Over the years of working with Clint, Natasha has learned how to tell calmness in his voice from cold rage.  
“And all the ends are loose?”  
"Not all," Natasha smiled. "Do you know what the trick with the ‘Ellipse’ perfume is?" It was taken out of production in my birth year. The remaining vials are all counted, and we can track the owners. Is there access to the Internet on your God-forsaken island?”  
“My God-forsaken island is the one of the world’s best sea resorts. Of course there is”.

It would be much easier if he, like everyone else, began to beg, to shake and surrender everyone he knows and does not know. Her passion would instantly burn out, she couldn’t feel any affection to a crushed worm, and her chilled vulva would stop keeping her from night sleep.  
But no. Every day she looked out of her deck chair from the roof of the cabin, how they dragged him into a workshop — beaten, he never went without a fight — and how he was dragged back, his body bruised and torn, and then the sailor took a mop and washed the bloody trail on the deck. She looked at these Vietnamese guys — all the deck plate sailors were Vietnamese — and sometimes she wondered what was going on in their tiny brains when they were mopping the blood off the deck or bringing food to captives.  
Sometimes she lingered at the workshop door and watched through the window how Khalid was tormenting the flesh she was dreaming of. Sometimes Khalid managed to snatch a cry, but that was it: the prisoner went into oblivion without saying a word. When Khalid came with a report, she did not hear him, she heard a different voice: "Not today." And, having let Khalid go, she rushed to the bed, squeezing her fingers between her hips.  


When he shot at her from the water, she came almost at once, without touching herself. Shr had to bite her lips for a while, not to give out a groan. The proximity of death exploded inside loke a fiery flower. She would have killed Khalid instantly had Khalid killed Rogers.

She studied his medical files that became public after the fall of the SHIELD. One could think that the super-soldier could be tortured endlessly. But Rogers fainted as well as usual man, and neither the water, nor the fire, not the electricity could bring him to his senses. Ophelia found out that about his healing factor. Suffering severe injuries, his body just “shuts out” the functions it doesn’t need right now, redirecting all the energy on the recovery. Every day the recovery took more and more time, probably because of general exhaustion. After a harpoon hit, Rogers lay unconscious for almost three days. Probably, for the better: this way, he caused no trouble, so they could unload four tons of raw opium from the hold, clean off the team and throw the corpses into the sea, wait for the seaplane from _Shaviyani_ and reload the goods and the most promising chicks. Then they forwarded all this to the island, waited for the storm to cease, and met the "Kitanga". Ophelia could have picked up another ship, but she was sick of Spartan conditions on the Abyssinian. All the charm of wealth lies in comfort. You live as you want and do what you want, that is the point. In addition, the Kitanga was faster, and Ophelia wanted to get rid of chicks and drugs, and concentrate on Rogers.

She was sure that his team, if they find the Abyssinian, would be stuck on a disabled container ship for a while, saving the slaves. But this delay, although it provided an opportunity to save the cargo and part of the proceeds, did not save the Syrian scheme as a whole. Container ship was a clue. Too big to sweep it under the carpet.  
Khalid, of course, was not happy — the Syrian scheme was a career step up for him, he recruited people, he taught them, he was engaged in logistics. And now all this has gone to waste. Ophelia wanted to save her drug routes, which meant to sacrifice a side-scheme of the slave trade.  
“It was temporary anyway. No war lasts forever, sooner or later someone would win, and the flow of refugees would run out," she said. "It just happened a little earlier. But there is no harm in this. Build an alternative scheme, more durable. You'll make it.”  
Khalid nodded grimly. Two favorite toys were taken from him at once, he needed a consolation prize.  
"When we're done with Rogers, I'll give you the Kitanga," she promised.  
It did not seem to make him happy.  
Rogers remained unconscious while he was carried to the seaplane, then to the warehouse, and then to the Kitanga. On the Ophelia’s orders of, one small guest cabin was claened from everything that was not screwed, and to what was screwed, they added reliable steel braces. Ophelia placed Rogers in this cabin and took care of them personally.  
The bleeding stopped, but the wound did not want to close. If the SHIELD data were correct, the reason was a lack of protein. Rogers was given the same thing as captives — all sorts of instant porridges, easy to cook, just add water. Approximately 900 calories a day, more than necessary, because they all day sat still, and nobody wanted them fat, skinny is sexy. Rogers received twice as many, but according to the SHIELD, his daily norm exceeded 5000, of which no less than 2,000 should have been protein.  
Hie dropped weight, subcutaneous fat burned all out, along with some muscle mass, but it made him only more beautiful. The deep hollows separated one muscle from the other, ypu could read lectures on the musculature of man, using him as an object, and Ophelia could spend hours wandering fingers on this relief, if only business allowed her to spend that an hours with. The ileal bones appeared, as if inviting to hold on them. And no bruises and scars could spoil that perfect back and ass.  
Rogers’ face, swollen and discolored from beating, regained its form and color. Cheeks and nose sharpened, wrinkles crashed deeper into the forehead, some skin was peeling off, but his eyelashes were still to kill for, and the rest — that was just the consequences of exhaustion, they would disappear. Ophelia put a plastic straw between his cracked lips, and he drank the protein mixture, on unconditioned reflex, still unconscious. And then she put her fingers in his mouth, and he licked and sucked like a blind kitten on the same reflex. For more fun, he was still too weak, his cock rested slack, like a snake that drank all the eggs in a bird's nest and fell asleep from satiety.  
Ophelia stitched several deepest wounds, first of all the one that harpoon left. She had not dressed it, she preferred to treat her own and other people's wounds open, unless they bleed or it was necessary to return to the field.  
Just twelve hours after Ophelia began giving Rogers a protein mixture, she saw a miracle: his nightmarishly churned shoulder started to heal. The edema ceased, the treacle stopped, the wound covered with a thin, lilac-pink skin.  
"You are a masterpiece," she said to the prisoner spread out on the bed. He did not wake.  
Sparing hrself from menial labor, Ophelia had put Noura to these chores. Naura was a sturdy peasant girl, and, though with a strain, but still she could turn a rather heavy man. That was funny how she squeezed her eyes shut, changing the absorbent pads. And the way she was ready to die of shame because of her own periods. And the way she first had no idea about the sanitary towels, and the way she miserably begged for them.

From her, Ophelia learned that Rogers had some touch with a girl named Ravan. That was good. That could be used.  
Ravan was city a girl, rather enlightened, even speaking English. Her gray eyes looked at Ophelia with hatred, although her knees trembled. Ravan hated Noura also, which was fun, too. Ophelia could have broken her in halves, just for a lesson, but why? Her value would not increase, rather, it will even reduce: there were customers who liked to break virgins. But shr was was possible to use against Rogers. She just laughed at the disheveled and thinned, stinking little girl, and sent her back to the cabin  for four, where all eight girls were packed now.  
Visiting to Jakarta now did not make sense: women intended there were left on the ship. Drugs should be reloaded on the Australian transport in the South China Sea.  
On the approaches to Matara she was overtaken by the news: the Tien Gow and  the Malamute were attacked. Some masked men and women fell on the "Malamute" from the sky, interrogated the entire crew with the use of special substances, and then called the Norwegian coast guard. The Malamute with the cargo was lost in the same way as the Abyssinian. On the Tien Gow the attacker was alone, and he did not use any special means, he simply gutted the captain just to show off, and then went to the mate with questions. The mate answered whatever the man in a Black Panther suit asked him.

The Polar Sun was as well as lost, too. That was only the matter of time.

Khalid tried to put the blame on her. It took Ophelia all the self-control not to strangle him.  
"If you'd let me kill him right away... If you just had not been seduced by his zebb..."  
"Shut up!” they were alone in her cabin so she smashed him with all her heart. "I gave you more than a week to make him talk, and you failed. We still know shit about his team. Had we killed him, they would still be upon us.”

She opened the safe, took out the ampoule of fentanyl, refilled the syringe.

“Let's go down. I'll show you the master class of interrogation.”


	9. The poison of no choice

Via the media, intelligences spread rumors about the truth serum, which can untie the tongue of even the most volitional person. No one knows the exact name or the secret formula. Those who strive to appear educated, speak of natrium pentothal or amitale sodium, scopolamine, mescaline...  
Ophelia knew: the drug of truth is any drug. In principle, any. Everything that removes the chains of criticism and evaluation from the subconscious, suppresses mistrust and reveals the defenseless essence of a person with its thirst for love and warmth.  
The most important thing is to determine the dose correctly and catch the moment of entry into anesthesia. If you overdo with a dose, the client simply falls asleep. If you miss the moment, the client will lose touch with reality, and instead of productive interrogation, you will get a stream of narcotic delusions.  
That is why she took fentanyl: with Rogers’ metabolism, everything needs to be multiplied by eight, and fentanyl even in a small dose can send an elephant to Jupiter. Medical packaging guaranteed accuracy you can never get with artisanal heroin.  
She injcted the drug, tied the blindfold over Rogers’ eyes, waited for a change in his pulse rate, leaned towards his ear.  
“Steve ...” in a whisper so that he would not recognize the voice. “Steve, can you hear me?”  
“Nuh… N-natasha ...” he murmured. Ophelia smiled. She was sure that the Black Widow was involved, but it was always nice to receive confirmation.  
“Yes, Steve. We found you. We saved you. Where are we going? Where to sail?”  
“To Wakanda. Only we cannot sail to Wakanda. There’s no an outlet to the sea.”  
“We fly there,” Ophelia smiled even wider. So his Nigger Majesty decided to join the fight against HYDRA? Fool’s errand...  
“Steve, someone busted another ship slave. We have allies. Who could it be? Tony Stark?”  
“Stark ...” Rogers’s face twisted. “N-nah... Why so dark?”  
“This is a bandage, Steve. Your eyes are injured. It will pass. Let's talk about Stark.”  
“Don't wannna talk ‘bout Stark. F-failed him.”  
“How?”  
“Bucky. I had to tell him.”  
“About what?”  
“Bucky killed his parents.”  
Ophelia raised her eyebrows. She had no idea who the hell was Bucky, but Stark's dirty secret wouldn't hurt to have in a pocket even if it wasn't what she needed at the moment.  
“So Tony did not help us. Who then? The SHIELD?”  
“SHIELD. Fury. He could.”  
“Fury is alive?”  
It was the second ponderous secret with which she didn’t yet know what to do.  
“Yeah. He came to Clint's house, remember?”  
Rogers was genuinely surprised that she did not remember. Carefully.  
“So much happened in Clint’s house,” she said evasively.  
A painful mental effort appeared on Rogers' face. He was clearly trying to catch the elusive control. That was like chasing a swamp fire through a quagmire.  
“Women,” he said. “We have to save women. Captives. Ravan El-Khanash, Marina Hassan, Noua Ali...” - he listed all six dozen or so names. Ophelia looked back at Khalid. Khalid, who insisted that after the torture, Rogers could only pray to lose his senses as soon as possible.  
Khalid tried to open his mouth, but she signaled him to keep the trap shut: an extraneous voice could knock Rogers out of talking mood.  
“They were abandoned on the Abyssinian. The team was shot...”  
“We found them. We saved them. Where will we send them? Wakanda?”  
“Wakanda is closed. Europe.”  
“And who is our curator in Europe?”  
“No one,” he sounded a bit surprised. “We are on our own”.

Ophelia was taken aback. Operations of this kind cannot be executed “on our own”. But drugged Rogers was telling the truth. How in hell…?

“I thought… Tony helps us secretly,” she said.

“Tony wouldn’t grant us snow in winter,” he smiled. “We’re crowdfounded, r’member?”

It took Ophelia an effort not to cry out. Who would crowdfound rouge Avengers?

“You have little faith in our Holy Mother Church. Still…” Rogers fell silent.

Carefully, she thought. Carefully. He is too aware. Fucking super-serum…

“Still what?”

“It’s too bad we are apart. He did not forget. He will come.”

“Who, Steve?”

"Thanos"

... Thanos? What the hell is Thanos?  
“When Thanos comes, we will be ready,” she said confidently. “You, me, Clint,”  she squinted. “The witch girl...”  
“Wanda,” he smiled.  
“Of course, Wanda. And the Black Panther. And Tony Stark.”  
“No. Not Tony...”  
“Why?”  
“He wants to get ahead... Again he'll create something... Like Ultron.”  
So, you need to be careful again.  
“Of course, I remember Ultron. It was terrible. But we saved the day.”  
“Not for all Sokovians. Not for Zemo’s family.”  
That was a genuine diamond. The knowledge that Stark was behind the Sokovian catastrophe... That was expensive.  
“This time he will be smarter. He will fix it.”  
“No. He continues to blame himself. And when he blames himself, he pushes himself harder. Over the edge…” Rogers again painfully focused on something.  
“How is... Pietro? Did he... come back from Spain?”  
Damn it. What to answer to this?  
“No. But he’s well.”  
“Pretty weird. We had buried him in Croatia”, Rogers took off the blindfold and sat down on the bed with a jerk. Khalid immediately put a gun against his forehead - a rather ridiculous gesture, for a drugged person could not be scared this way. Ophelia grabbed the syringe from the table — an half of the dose still remained there — and hit Rogers in the thigh like with a dagger, squeezing the piston all the way. Rogers tried to grab her by the throat, and she even allowed: under fentanyl, muscles are slightly more tense than boiled spaghetti.

“Yes, my captain,” she smiled in his face. “One dose, and you dumped everything on me. About Clint, Wanda, Stark, Ultron, Thanos... Sleep with it”.

And she gently shoved him in the forehead, sending him back to the mattress.

***

Finally, after all the rolling and rocking, the ship drifted not to Sri Lanka, but further to the North: India, the vicinity of Thiruvanatnapuram. The first they have met was the ship of the British Navy,  RFA Fort Victoria, and Natasha and her comrades happily passed the damned trough and the women to the Brits and took off on the jet, despite the demands of the British ship to stop and identify themselves.

Since almost at the same time Black Panther discovered a cargo of weapons and drugs at the Tian Gou, and some completely unknown do-gooders handed over to the Norwegian authorities the Malamut with slaves and drugs on board, shit hit the fan at the international level.

Getting out of the shower in her hotel room, Natasha was not surprised to see the familiar bald head, towering over the back of the arm-chair.

“Want to ask me how we happened to squander Rogers?” she hid the gun in her pocket and sat down on the bed.

"No," Fury shrugged. “I already know. Do I not remember, how he ordered Hill to open fire, while remained on the doomed helicarrier to save Barnes’ soul? I came to ask how bad everything is and how I can help.”

Natasha took a smartphone - yes, Tony, I switched to Samsung - and found a snapshot of what Sam had found in the container where Steve was kept. The cell was furnished with a gash bucket and a polyurethane foam mat, all covered with blood from the upper side. On the lower side, the blood stains were composed into a finger-made pattern — a stylized image of a sprout.

“HYDRA,” said Natasha. “That's how bad it is. Our small operation to rescue refugees pinched the tentacle of HYDRA.”

Fury silently opened the shaker, took the gkasses, poured for himself and for her.

“What the hell did you forget in Syria?”

“I realized that Steve will go crazy if he continued to paint eyes on cows’ asses.”

“Pardon?” - Fury raised his sunshades to forehead, showing the blind eye. Natasha grinned and opened another photo album: a flock of pale African cows, each with pair of eyes on the bum. It was clear that the artist experimented with styles and trends: from academic painting and medieval style to Cubism, Suprematism and cartoons.

“In Wakanda,” she explained, “the peasants graze cattle. But the leopards give them a hard time. They attack cows and calves, but they themselves, bastards, are in the endangered-species list. And black panthers there are sacred animals, only a member of the royal family has the right to kill them. And then some clever man published an article in a cattle magazine that if you draw eyes on a cow’s ass, then cognitive dissonance happens to a leopard or a lion, and it does not touch the cattle. Tested experimentally. Well, Steve volunteered, we supported him, T'Challa gave us a truck of acrylic paint, there we went. The first week was fun. Like a safari...” Natasha shook her head, remembering. The Ukrainian expression “fits like brown eyes to an ass” filled with a new meaning then. Fury flipped through the album.

“Did it work?”

“So far. Though I do not really know what will happen when the leopards get hungry enough to overcome the cognitive dissonance...”

Fury laughed.

"How large are T'Challa's herds?"

“Sixty thousand heads. Two hundred thousand all over Vacakanda. In a sense, they are his too, because according to the traditional law, everything in the country belongs to the king...”

Fury raised an eyebrow, in his own peculiar manner. Returned the smartphone to her.

“Rogers felt really lousy,” he said. 

“He felt lousy back in 2012, before the Chitauri attack. In Wakanda, he felt... I'm trying to pick a word and I can not. Even in the Russian part of my lexicon.”

“So he went to Syria to seek death.“

“Rather, redemption.”

“You are the doctor.”

Natasha looked straight into the old Cyclops eye.

“He spoke about the war,” she said. “Recently, more and more. About the big war. Quoting Auden, ‘The First of September’.” 

“Thanos?”

“Us. All by ourselves. Ukraine, Syria — all this is foreshadowing, as the Czech Republic and Poland back in his time. Vultures smell the wind. The critical mass accumulates, until...”

“Which one of you is so poetic, you or him?”

Natasha grinned, finished her cocktail.

“Interesting thing ...” Fury turned the empty glass in his hand and rang ice cubes. “Literally the same thoughts were expressed to me not so long ago by one person, you know him ...”

“Tony Stark?”

“A-a-and we have a winner! Yes, Tony Stark. He is now posessed with the idea of uniting the humanity’s best minds — including himself, of course — in order to prevent this war. He finds that T'Challa, Vision and certain Stephen Strange are worthy to join the club, they are considering the other candidates... Oh, and Tony already picked up a good name: The Illuminati.

Natasha clutched at her forehead. Tony!

"How far did you proceed in search of Rogers?" Fury asked without a transition.

“We are thrown back to the beginning. We had to save women, we lost time. Steve was taken somewhere to the Maldives. By a seaplane, obviously. And the Maldives, if you happen to know, consist of 1,192 islands. Hundreds of ships moor and depart daily. And these are only those that register.”

“Any leads?”

“Yes,” Natasha shrugged. “But now we have to unwind the snarl from the other end. Search for a woman. She was in HYDRA, somewhere in the middle echelon. Kept in the shadows. Made a name only recently. And she adores the "Ellipse" perfume.”

 “Look and you will find,” Fury rose. “Hill and Coulson will help with all our resources. I have only one request. When you find Rogers... call on Stark's help”.

“Why would I?”

Fury turned and looked at her with penetrating gaze.

“Nat, the very fact that these two had a quarrel, was lousy enough. They both feel bad about it. Let Tony be a big damn hero. After that, he will not be able to keep grudge on Rogers.”

“And Barnes?” - Natasha squinted.

“The guy in the fridge? Let him stay there until Stark cools down. Small steps, Nat. Small. Promise me.” Natasha gritted her teeth. Why, oh why can't I just tell him to fuck off?

“Okay, Nick. I promise. The only trouble is…”

“?” old Cyclop’s eyebrow wrinkled his forehead again.

“Steve did not promise anything. And he is free to choose.”

“He will be free,” - corrected Fury. “When you save him, right? You and Stark.”


	10. Surrender

They sat Ravan on a chair facing the back, her kamiz torn down to the belt. She lowered her head, trying to shield her unripe breasts with bound hands. Rodgers did not look at them. He looked at Ophelia and Kimona like a sniper on a target: no emotions, just pure intention.  
That was very exiting.  
“To make things clear at once,” Ophelia sat astride on a chair, almost repeating the pose of the girl. “If you lie, little Ravan will be electrocuted. If you hesitate to answer, the same. If you try to free yourself, the same... And so on.”  
Ophelia nodded, and Kimona prodded the girl between the shoulder blades with the tazer. She screamed.  
“You haven't asked a question yet,” said Rogers as if he spat out a bullet with every word.  
“Just a demonstration.”  
Kimona raised the girl by the hair. Ophelia saw how Rogers's knuckles whitened.  
“Let's talk about Ultron,” she said. “What’s that?”  
“Didn't I tell you? You said, I dumped everything ... Stop! Wait, I'll answer!”  
Again, the discharge cracked, the girl cried, slid sideways in convulsions and fell to the floor.  
“Don't tell her anything!” she shrieked in Arabic.

Rogers let out a sigh and spoke smoothly, almost mechanically.  
“Strucker dabbled with Loki's scepter. As a result, there were many corpses, Maximov twins and Ultron. Wait!”

Kimona zapped the girl again. She was already on the floor, so…

“Why?” muttered Rogers.

“Because you lied, darling. Tony Stark created Ultron. That’s what you said.”

“Tony Stark created only a shell. Ultron was an extra-terrestrial AI who slid into that shell.”

“Where it came from? The AI?”

“The stone in the sceptre contained a kind of… supercomputer. I stood for sending the scepter to Asgard immediately, but Tony begged for two days to study the stone and everything we downloaded in Sokovia. I... had no reason to argue. Now I understand that I should not argue, just burn everything to hell, without asking anyone a permission... Well, Monday morning quarterback, that’s me. In the course of research, Ultron somehow... became a person. Before we could say Jack Robinson, he broke through the firewalls, leaked to the Internet and was everywhere. He cleared the remnants of your bases better than we could. Paved his way with bodies. Captured a laboratory in Seoul and created a biometallic body for himself. That was his mistake: the living brain Wanda was able to read. She saw into his intentions: to destroy every life on Earth. The twins switched sides and helped to steal a new body from him. Stark and Banner loaded another artificial intelligence into it, and by the time of the final fight, we had Vision, capable to beat Ultron on equal terms. We destroyed the platinum bastard,” Rodgers chuckled bitterly. “But the Sokovians paid the price too high…”

“It seems to me, or you’re trying to protect Stark?”  
Rogers closed his eyes for a moment.  
“What is the point for me to protect him? I hate him.”  
He did not lie, but he kept something.  
“Hate him? Since when?”  
Rogers shook his head, as if objecting someone.  
“Probably, hate is too strong a word. I'm... tired of him. He is a big child. Brilliant, brave, spoiled. It would even be nice were he younger than forty-six. Want to try to blackmail him with Ultron? Go ahead. He will break you only to cope with his guilt.”  
Ophelia smiled. He definitely kept something back.  
“Steve, honey,” she cooed. “You don't want this brute to hurt Ravan again?”  
Brute in question expressively snapped the tazer in dangerous closeness to the trembling girl’s bare back.  
“Ask specific questions. Stark Tower security codes. The identification system. What are you interested in?”  
“Your breakup. The world is full of rumors. And I need the truth.”  
“He tried to throw me into the pit, and I split his arc reactor and for two seconds considered the possibility of pulling his head off.”  
Rogers turned his head aside and repeated:  
“Just for two seconds. But seriously.”  
“And all because of the Winter Soldier?” - Rogers behaved oddly, but it was absurd to expect complete adequacy from a person on fentanyl.  
“All because of you, bastards,” Rodgers said with agonizing melancholy. “It’s you who made him into a murderer, and then sent him to kill Howard. Wait! Wait wait! I didn’t mean...”  
Too late. Ravan screamed under the tazer jolt. Rodgers hid his head in his lap. Then he straightened again.

“Listen,” he said. “I really don’t want this child to be hurt. But I am fully aware that in the end of the day you will sell her to be hurt as much as they want. So you cannot endlessly dance on my sense of guilt. I'm not Stark. I am one war older, and that was a surprisingly nasty war. I learned to live with the memory of tortured children when your grandmother was but an egg cell. Do not tighten the screw until you tear the thread”.  
The chain on his left arm jangled ominously. The chain was above a meter long to let him get to the latrine, and he recovered on a protein diet amazingly quickly. Ophelia decided not to tempt fate.  
“Winter Soldier,” she said softly. “Where is he now?”  
“In the cryo chamber,” Rogers shrugged his good shoulder. “In Wakanda.”  
“Why did T’Challa change so much to his father’s killer?”  
“Because Barnes didn't kill his father, Zemo did it.”  
“And how did you convince him of that?”  
“Zemo just admitted it himself. His target was Stark; he didn’t want T’Challa to spoil his revenge.”  
“I don’t understand this scheme.”

“Helmut Zemo took revenge on us, mostly Stark and me, for Sokovia. His whole family died there. The plan was for us to start tearing each other, and it worked. First, Zemo found somewhere the information that it was Winter Soldier who killed Howard and Maria Stark. He got to the Soldier’s curator, former Russian HYDRA officer, tortured the codes out of him…”

“Which codes?”

“Code words that turn Barnes to Winter Soldier mode. After getting them, he set up Barnes with that explosion in Vienna. It seems he didn’t care what and where to blow up, he just needed to make the special services of the whole world hunt for Barnes. But fate played into his hands: the UN began to push the Sokovia Accordss. So he chose Vienna. He wanted the security services to raise Barnes like hounds — so I would rush to protect him. Which I did. And, since Barnes is an American citizen who is wanted for murders committed in Washington three years ago, and Zemo knew the extradition procedure, he also knew that it includes a psychiatric expertise. To kill a summoned psychiatrist and take his place was a matter of technique. He wanted to interrogate the Winter Soldier. Not Barnes, the Winter Soldier. He read the code. And then the fate played in his hand again. It turned out that Russians have in their training center not only the Starks murder video, but also five more Winter Soldiers sleeping in the cryochambers. A perfect bait for me and Stark. So Zemo let Barnes out like a wandering bullet, and moved to Russia. Russians buried their dirty secrets in a rocket mine in Oymyakon. One hundred and seventy feet below the ground…” Rogers spoke smoothly, almost mechanically, as if he was making a report. He only rocked slightly back and forth, his arms wrapped around his knees.

“What about these Winter Soldiers?”

“Zemo killed them. All of them. He waited for us to come, then he showed Stark the video of his parents' murdering and sat down with popcorn to watch us kill each other. That’s how T’Challa found out the truth. He had no reason to want Barnes dead, so…”

“But he had reasons to kill Zemo.”

“Zemo was about to commit suicide. So T’Challa chose the “live and suffer” option for him.”

Ophelia shook her head.

“It sounds like something completely idiotic. Why should Russians send Winter for Stark?”

“To take the super soldier serum. Howard managed to restore it. The Winter Soldier took it. That’s how Russians created those five in the rocket mine…”

“Sounds stupid anyway. When you say that happened?”

“I never said…”

“When?”

“December 1991.”

“And how many surveilliance cameras were there that time? You want me to believe that Winter was so stupid to let himself be caught on a record?”

“That was not stupidity, that was a message! Russians wanted American branch of HYDRA to know who had taken the serum.”

“Why would they have wanted it?”

“Beats me… You are HYDRA, ask someone of yours. No, stop! Don’t!..”

Ophelia waved Kimona to stop.

“Still, sounds kinda overelaborated to me. What if he failed to lure you into that rocket mine?”

“I think such a creative guy would find a way to send video to Stark. Tony’s reaction he predicted exactly. Mine, too.”

“The mighty power of friendship,” Ophelia laughed. “And we are fed with this shit since childhood.”

Rogers didn’t look into her eyes, he looked into Ravan’s.

“So, you selflessly sold yourself to Wakanda and became a Nomad to get an asylum for your frostbitten friend. But I wonder what interests Wakanda has in the Middle East?”

“You got it totally wrong. I don’t work for Wakanda…”

Ravan cringed in her chair, Rogers swung forward slightly, and Ophelia gestured to the Filipino. It’s never late to fry the snotnose.

“You want the truth from me, not a convenient lie?” said Rogers. “So, this is true: Nomad is totally my initiative. I could not sit still when war in Syria began again. His Majesty was only a sponsor. You see, he hates slavers. They have such a cultural feature in Wakanda.”

"So, you just asked for money and a quinjet, and he just gave it?”

Rogers smiled.

"Only money. The jet I hijacked already. You see... I am a convinced democrat. But absolute monarchies have their advantages. T’Challa does not report to voters. He is the king. I asked — and he gave.”

Ophelia gave Kimone a sign to lower the taser rod.

“You know, I believe you,” she said. “I wouldn't believe another, but Captain America ... You're just the type of a nutcase. How did you get us?”

“One elderly refugee in the convoy I organized asked me to find her children and grandchildren who had left earlier... with your escort. It was too late for the parents. We found her grandson in one of the brothels of Hurghada. The boy turned out to be observant, he managed to describe accurately the ship, and we traced the ends to Najah. Did you think Najah died in the bombing? Well, technically speaking, yes, he died during the bombing. But not from the bomb.”

Ophelia had no idea who Najah was. She must discuss this with Khalid.

“Are you aware that I will double-check your words?” she said. “So, Najah coughed up one route to you. But he did not know the next route.”

Rodgers scoffed again.

“A limited number of roads lead to the coast. Bombings limit it even more. Army officials who control them are easy to calculate. You figured them out. And Vanda Maximova can read minds, but she also completely erases short-term memory. See the irony: your business and you were destroyed by the girl that your buddy Strucker created.”

“Destroyed?” Ophelia rose from the chair. “I think I am far away from being destroyed. All your friends could accomplish was to mew some dirty customs officers and block several transport channels for a while. We will bear this loss easily. Cut off one head — two more shall take its place.”

Rogers smiled so cheerfully that she could not help punching him in that smile. He did not try to strike back, did not even raise his hand to cover his face, only licked off the blood and said: “Two of the SHIELD’s best spies follow you; a guy who can break this pretty yacht on his knee and one more, both a pilot and a plane by himself; and then — a witch, whose abilities I have not yet measured. With my silence, I bought them two weeks, and be sure, they used this time wisely.”

“But all they found was an old container ship, two dozen second-rate broads and your shoes,” Ophelia took him by the chin. “And your silence has come to an end. What did you say, “not today”? “Not today” came today.”

“It came when I wanted. And the smartest thing you can do now is to bring deep apologies to the girls and me, drop us off at the nearest port, return everything you took from the refugees, adding compensation, tell me who did you sold the rest of them to, and to disappear in the night, using the time we spend on search and rescue as a head start. Until we finish with them, we will not start woth you.”

To think that she almost believed that he was broken! Almost lost her interest. Oh damn you...

“What about my proposal,” she leaned to his ear. “I will sit on your face and you will lick me nice and clean. And if you fail and I don’t come, baby girl Ravan will finish the job. And if you try to headbutt me again, she will be also headbutted. She will generally pay your bills. As she did today. What do you say?” Yes, oh yes! This disgust on his lips kept together, this hatred burning in his eyes... She was almost deceived by his broken humble look and his willingness to speak, he almost slipped away. But endanger the next innocent snot-nosed maiden — and his nature shows itself.

“Should I pretend that I have a choice?” Rogers asked quietly.

“That is my boy,” Ophelia smiled. “Kimona, get out and take the girl back to the rest. Bye.”

Unlike Khalid, Kimona was stupid and obedient. He executed the order exactly. Ophelia undid her jeans and threw them off, remained in one shirt.

“On your back,” she ordered.

Rogers followed the order, with a poorly disguised protest visible in every muscle.

“You know, in some respects, I was stuck in the forties,” he said. “In those times, when the idea of kissing the woman’s breast was progressive on the verge of a perversion...”

Ophelia sat, for a start, on his stomach, pressing his shoulders to the mattress. Then she put both her hands on his chest. The convexity of the pectoral muscles filled the palms, as if Ophelia had grabbed a woman — only his flesh was harder, drier, more intense.

“Like this?” she asked, and took his right nipple between her lips, moistened hair on the edge with a twist of her tongue. She noted the increased frequency of breathing. With even greater pleasure, she felt something that moved heavily behind, touched the edge of her shirt and rested, still not very confidently, on her lower back just above the split buttocks. No, it’s impossible to rape a man, they are always eager, some just lie to themselves.

“Tsss, today we seem to do without methamphetamine,” she purred, shifting higher. “A pity I sent off poor little Ravan. It would be useful for her to look and learn, what do you think?”

“Enough,” he squeezed her hips with his fingers. “If you want me, let's go. Leave her alone.”

Ophelia laughed and shifted higher, spreading her hips. “Onward, my knight.”

He took a deep breath, as if jumping into the water, he was funny like that - and dug into her lower lips, his mouth inept and dry, his lips still cracked. His tongue was hot and inept, too, he just licked like a dog, and sometimes she felt his teeth, but she was so excited that his incompetence did not hinder her at all, she only wanted him to go on. She clung to the bracket, to which his chain was riveted, threw her head back and closed her eyes. The yacht was swaying, it responded to the rise and fall of the waves easier than a container ship, the sun was hitting the porthole, and the flashes running through the water were visible even under the eyelids. And when the red mist was ready to explode white, she forced herself to tear off from him, moved lower, lower — and impaled herself on his penis, the entire length. Rogers arched in a silent moan, dropped his hands.

“Hey, do not relax. I want you to participate.”

He opened his eyes, and it was written in large print on his face: you asked for it. The chain clinked, two strong arms lay on her buttocks, and Rogers, bending his knees, rammed her from below sharply and strongly, like he drove a pile. “Yes,” she whispered. “Oh, yes...” She came from the third or fourth thrust, not because he made her, but because she was already on a verge and fell by herself; but he continued to drive himself into, sweaty, grinning, angry. And he came violently, pulling her on himself as if he wanted to reap her in two. Yes, he wanted to, surely.

Ophelia was in no hurry to get off his limp body — though the sex was completely mediocre, the situation was quite exciting. Rogers' wounds almost healed, most would disappear with time, and many will remain forever - like burns on his wrists and ankles. What Khalid did to him was more than just zeal, it was hatred. And Ophelia read the diary of this hatred, stroking his chest, his sides and stomach with her fingertips...

“Should I play enthusiasm? Or may I just turn to the wall and snore?” he asked.

“How about a pillow talk?”

“There can be only a pillow interrogation between us.”

“Your dick is still in me. Is this an interrogation?”

“While I'm in your ship and my hand is in your handcuff? In my opinion, yes.”

“Would you rather go back to chat with Khalid? Are you a masochist?”

“Torture or rape? What to choose, everything is so delicious.”

She rolled off him laughing and fell down on the mattress.

“Rape? Are you serious?”

“When one of the participants does not agree or is forced, that's called rape.”

Ophelia sat up. Deliberately so that he could see everything. She started to unbutton her shirt slowly.

“Maybe you didn't like that at the beginning. But then you had a boner allright. And you came. You liked it, Rogers. And you call it rape? Yes, you really stuck in the forties.”

Finished with the last button, she let her shirt slip off her shoulders.

“Look at me, Rogers. You do not like what you see?”

He looked through his eyelashes.

"Excellent body.”

“Better than the Black Widow’s?"

"She is closer to the Ancient Greek ideal, you— to the Renaissance.”

She did not know whether to consider this as a compliment or not. She decided yes.

“You are quite a connoisseur of art. I didn't expect it.”

”Few people remember I studied academic painting. For a year and a half I painted nude every day. So if you thought to discourage me...”

“Will you draw me? With a diamond around my neck?”

Rogers silently held out his hand. Tense fingers trembled like he had Parkinson's disease. And Ophelia had to admit that Khalid had overdone it. Pulling out his nails — that was probably too much.

“Shame” she took his hand anf put it on her breast. “ Did you do sculpture? Imagine doing it. Come on.”

Well, the second, chained hand, could not reach to her chest, so Ophelia stretched her leg across Rogers' belly, put his hand on her thigh.

“Am I not better than the rest of your women? Well, since we are having an interrogation, answer.”

He grinned.

“Mirror, Mirror on a wall... Quite a dilemma. You promised to punish a girl for a lie, but you may not like the truth, and again you will punish her.”

“I promise that I will only punish you for the truth. Even if I get very upset.”

“You're not better than the rest of my women. You can be comforted by the fact that neither you are worse.”

Why did her face feel hot? If he were a really good lover, maybe she would have endured it, but he was a log, just a beautiful log, and with some sort of zest that turned her on. She was beginning to understand men who hunted beauties, even knowing that sex with these beauties promises to be banal and dull. Something was in the very act of possession, something that made her have orgasms without any effort from Rogers, rather despite his resistance... And suddenly she understood the meaning of his completely honest answer.

“My God. You mean you are a virgin, Cap? Are you so clumsy just because you do not know how how to fuck? And I popperd a cherry, which was... ninety-nine years old? You're not gay, I see,” she purposely pressed her leg on the member, whish was already showing signs of life. “How did you manage to keep your orange blossom fresh?”

“On ice.”

“You were unfrozen for how many, six years? And all this time no one tried?”

“Not everyone likes ice cream.”

Ophelia laughed.

“What a surprise. If I knew that you’re such a greenass, dear, I would be more careful for the first time.”

 “It worked out good enough. I could not move for a few hours after that.”

“Well, you don't headbutt your bride on your first wedding night. And now you are resurrecting right before my eyes. So, Rogers, you have a chance to do it as a true American hero, in a missionary position.”

She wanted to feel his weight on her finally, the entire length of his gorgeous body close to her body, all his warmth...

“I don’t want you.”

She put her hand on his dick, half-ready by now, she squeezed, made him ready with several strokes and caressed a bell-end with her finger, watching how Rogers' face was changing.

“While your dick wants me, I don’t care how you cheat yourself, blue-eyed prude. Did you say this is rape? So, it means you do what I say. And I will tell you more, Rogers: a couple more days — and you will beg me to let you lick my cunt. You will beg me on your knees. I read a lot of interesting things in your medical record, dear captain. Say thanks to Romanova, who poured all the SHIELD and HYDRA files into the Network in a bundle”.

“That was my order.” Rogers sighed sadly, momentarily pulling Ophelia under him, spreading her legs with his knee.

“So you want it that way?”

“Hush-hush, and a foreplay? How did you say — progressive to the point of perversion? Kiss my chest, Rogers. Squeeze it with your hands and kiss until I say "enough." Make me moan.”

Rogers hung over her, leaning on his arms. The flecks from the ocean ran along his shoulder, side, tense member... Living gold on the living gold.

“You're the first woman I really want to break both arms. Both.”

He knelt between her legs, squeezed her breasts with his hands and buried his face into them. And she laughed at his impotent rage — until she began to moan. He really did not know how, but there are things one does not need to learn. Waves do not learn how to beat on the shore, they beat, because such is their nature. Rogers rammed her as if he rammed a city gate, he wasn’t just fucking, he was killing her in his heart, and it was showing in his eyes. Captain America's high morality shell cracked like a burned skin, and Ophelia saw what she wanted and waited: a perfect animal made for killing. When he came, she clutched his hair and looked at his face. And then she lowered his head between her thighs, pressed his lips to where everything was burning. The orgasm was thermonuclear.


	11. Trail in the sea

“Well, at least it's better than having your nails torn out or your ankles thrashed with pipes,” Tony’s voice sounded very confident, as always, when Tony wasn’t confident about something.

“Way better,” Steve agreed almost sincerely.

“That is, the portion of humiliation is the same, but after the torture, it hurts fucking everywhere”.

“It hurts fucking everywhere now.”

“This is a phantom pain. Caused by endorphin failure in the brain. Even those real wounds that now hurt, in fact, are already healing.”

“I know, Tony. I’m trying to think about it.”

It was good, that the chain could get to the toilet. And that the left hand was chained, so he could vomit without straining the wounded shoulder.

“Or maybe it is better to puke all over the entire cabin?” Bucky was cleaning his nails with a knife. “To pretend to be utterly insane, to drool over a beard like King David? Smear walls with shit? Maybe she will disdain?”

“Not a great plan,” Tony rarely showed that he noticed Bucky, but once he noticed, it meant that the plan was really bad. “Listen less to brainwashed killers, Rodgers.”

“He’s my subpersonality just like you,” snapped Steve.

“Yes, but it was my subpersonality that coped well with the situation. This Madame squeaks under us like a cat, and she is happy when she leaves. And that means: there will be a normal meal. Wounds will heal. You get stronger so you can break the chain.”

“If you catch a moment between onset and come up,” Bucky screwed up. “She's a bitch, but not a fool. Fentanyl holds tight.”

“Tell me it can make me an impotent,” Steve said.

“It can,” Bucky nodded. “But with your health, it will take weeks, if not months.”

Steve sat down on the floor. What is the point of getting to the bed if in a minute his bowels would tie up again in a sea knot?

“So that’s why he needs you,” Tony winced. “Drug expert.”

“Drugs,” said Bucky. “Sensory deprivation. Torture. Humiliation. Beating. When he was patched on the field without anesthesia, I held his hand. He calls me when he needs to endure the pain. He calls you when he needs to think. I would be happy in your place.”

“I would perfectly help to cope with the humiliation. And pain, too. If Steve had completely given me control, this regular rape would be one of the most funny experiences in his life. Well, you must agree, Rogers, no matter how many boobs you draw on your academic studies, the HYDRA boobs are really in the Top-5. Just don’t think about her torturing children, think how many men stared at these boobs in a vain hope at least accidentally rub against them. And she chose you from all. You need to grow a little ego, cap. Not necessarily as big as as mine, but at least a little bit.”

“You are not an Ego, you are an Id,” said Bucky. “Eternal teenager, who wants just to play and have fun.”

“No, Barnes, you are an Id. An animal, embodied reptilian complex: fight, kill, fuck.”

“Hey, stop, both of you!” snapped Steve. “Stop fighting in my head!”

For some time it became quiet.

“You're both part of me,” Steve said, his head thrown back against the wall. “I carry both of you under my skin. Stop tearing me in halves.”

“As if you didn’t get under my skin,” Tony folded his arms across his chest and shook his head.

“You were there since we were kids,” added Bucky.

Awkward silence again.

Lord, I never was uncomfortable with myself alone. What has changed now?

Pain, that's what. Relentless, albeit phantom. It returned him to an icy nightmare, especially at nights.

His mind preserved fragments of... not even the memories, but their shadows. There in the ice, he did not come to his senses, no, but he had some dreams in a coma, and in those dreams he felt suffocation, cold and pain. And the impossibility of neither moving nor breathing, nor feeling anything other than cold and pain in a broken body, gave rise to such a comprehensive, deep and complete horror that it crashed into memory, despite no memory could be there in the absence of consciousness.

“So, a survival strategy,” Tony rubbed his forehead. “What is good so far? A normal cabin instead of a container, a normal food instead of plastic porridge, albeit in scanty amounts, and shifting to psychological tortures instead of physical tortures, which is still for the better, because the physical ones were slowly killing you...”

“It was killing him fast,” corrected Bucky. Tony pretended not to hear.

“And sex,” he added. “Steve, whatever your superego thinks, sex is good. Sex means endorphins, which you lack due to drugs.”

“And you're on the chain,” Bucky intercepted. “Brand new and pretty strong...”

“There is a weak link in it,” Tony reminded. “Either at the handcuff, or at the bracket, where it was cut and riveted.”

“Bracket,” said Bucky. “The chain is a weapon.”

“Braket,” Tony agreed. “Well, and the porthole. It is important. You can see when we get close to any land. And you can just see the sun. God, when I got out of that cave, I sobbed like a fool for two hours, just because I could see the sun again.”

Bucky said nothing, but looked very expressive.

Yes. The porthole is good. But you can't escape through it. Even if you manage to hammer out the glass - the shoulders would not squeeze through.

“Which leads us to another option,” Tony nodded. “Since you spend your time with your nose in the toilet, look for weak points in the structure. This is a ship's latrine, there is a vacuum wash, a rather complicated system, which, if broken, should be repaired quickly. It must have access. The panel behind the toilet is probably removable, and behind it there is a space that leads somewhere.”

“The question is, could you later put the panel back,” said Bucky.

After another spasm and another portion of bile spitted into the toilet, Steve examined the panel and made a verdict:

“I can break it out, but carefully remove it – no.”

“Then forget it,” said Bucky. “Anyway, you will get at the best to the next cabin. The transfer would be the right moment.”

“Not if they drug you into complete stupor,” Tony objected.

“Have you already developed the tolerance to drugs?” asked Bucky. “Along with addiction?”

Steve slightly wavered. He did not pay attention.

“So start paying attention. Consider how long the trip lasts, how strong it is. Do you have a boner without an additional stimulators?”

Yeah, right. A boner.

“You’ve developed the tolerance,” Bucky nodded.

“With a parabolic velocity,” Tony added.

“After your escape, comedown will be fierce,” said Bucky. “This must be taken into account.”

Steve chuckled silently. How do you take this into account? It is necessary to run, in any way, as soon as a land appears on the horizon.

The North Star hung low over the horizon. Judging by its location, the ship was heading north-northeast. So, have they already rounded Singapore and entered the South China Sea? Where is she going to sell the girls? Thailand? Philippines? It always seemed to Steve that transporting sex slaves there was the same as importing oil into Texas, but on the other hand, it could just be a staging post...

_How many more of them will I lose?_

“Because of your escape, they had to leave more than twenty women,” said Bucky. “This is a good exchange.”

“Only if they could make it.”

“You contacted with Barton. They would find the ship. Have faith.”

Steve closed his eyes. Yes, he said it to himself. He was still saying this to himself, he didn’t lost his mind to think Bucky is real.

A cramp swept through his body like a wave along the shipside. If this comedown is not yet fierce, then what will be fierce?

“You’ll feel as if a Dementor blowed you hard,” Bucky promised.

Oh, thanks.

“By the way,” notice Tony. “The lady did not blow you even once. She only excited you with her mouth, but you always came strictly into the inner sanctum. And always without a condom. Doesn't it lead to any thoughts?”

“Tony…”

“Yes, the processor failure. I understand.”

It would be better if something else failed.

“No no no,” Tony shook his head decisively. “As long as this thing works, lady needs you,” Tony listened to the steps in the corridor. “And here she is. Speak of the devil.”

“Not her,” Bucky argued. “This one walks with small uncertain steps. And with a man. Likely heavy boozy.”

The lock clicked. Leaning on Noura, Khalid entered the cabin.

He was really very drunk and still had a bottle in his hand. With his other hand, he squeezed the girl's breast.

“Oh, shit ...” Tony said wistfully. No matter how much he says about the advantage of mental torture over physical torture, he himself endured them no better.

Steve sat down, pulled up his legs. This seemed to have changed from habit to reflex: when Madame Hydra or her dragon appeared, he took the uterine position.

“With what I still did not beat you, bastard?” Khalid asked thoughtfully in Russian.

That was a difficult question. Khalid used his fists, his boots, a whip, a truncheon, a pipe cutoff, a chain, a cable, a hose and a crowbar. Maybe something else, he was quite inventive and some of Steve’s memories were blurred.

“With your stupid head,” prompted Bucky. Steve decided to keep shut up. Knowledge of Russian was not so hot a trump card, but in his position it was not wise to give up even trifles.

“I would break you,” Khalid continued, still thoughtfully and in Russian. “If she allowed to maim you. Pluck out your eyes. Works good with men like you.”

Yes, Steve thought. That could work. If he was not ready to die at any moment, if he imagined the future life in the eternal darkness, without even drawing, his only way to cope... it would have worked.

“So, she put it out to you... Or did you put it out to her? Maybe you will put it out to me?”

“Fuck your mother,” Tony said, not laughing, not sobbing. “Yes, this is jealousy. And the slavers, it turns out, have feelings.”

“Do not understand the human language, eh?” the gangster grinned, switched to English. “I'll fuck you.”

“Now, let me take the wheel,” said Bucky.

Steve let him drive. His head was cramped, like that Volkswagen he hijacked in Leipzig. Sam. Why are Tony and Bucky here, but not Sam and Natasha? Why I did not call the ghosts of those who have always been there for me and supported me unconditionally?

Because I do not want to see them in hell, even as ghosts?

“Go ahead,” he said out loud. “Just now I have intestinal cramps. Might turn out to be... unappetizing.”

Khalid grimaced. Steve would give him that, Khalid had quite an imagination.

“Then you can blow me quickly? Since you're not so proud?”

“After everything you did to me, you would risk putting something in my mouth? Really?”

Wow, I can still grin like this...

“Well, you went bat for this girl. Rushed into water for her. Won't let anything bad be done to her, will ya?”

“Whatever you do to her, you won't be able to bite off her dick.”

Khalid considered that for a while, continuing to paw the girl, almost mechanically. And then he pulled out his fly, sank down on the steps, grabbed Noura by the hair and bent her to his groin.

Judging by the girl`s reaction, this was not the first time for her.

“She learned a lot here,” Khalid continued to look into Steve’s eyes. “And she helps to teach others. Still do not regret not letting her drown?”

“I regret about the gun,” said Steve sincerely. The chain was too short to reach Khalid. How to make this mountain go to Mohammed? “I regret every minute the gun failed”.

“You’ll regret it more than once,” Khalid showed his teeth.

Steve — or rather, Bucky, — suddenly felt like laughing. That is, there was nothing funny about a scared girl being raped before his eyes, but if one could abstract from this (years of brainwashing made  Bucky the great master of abstraction), the overall picture turned out to be funny beyond comprehension. So, these weeks of torture, this nightmarish duel, in which only one was bleeding, went all the time for the lady's heart — well, if we assume that this lady has a heart... Okay, let's say, not for the heart, for another part that the lady definitely had and happily used... on the loser. Poor Khalid, he tried so hard. He did his dsmnedest. He beat, he burned, he cut in the sweat of his brow. And all he got was a can of worms in the end. And now he has come to finish the rematch, and he failed again.

“What? What are you laughing at, son of American bitch?”

Steve-Baki shook his head. It was painful to laugh, everything was painful, but he just couldn’t help.

“You're so funny,” he groaned. “Oh, oh, oh, Lord... You are the most ridiculous of all the scum I have ever seen. Red Skull, Pierce, that pirate Batrok, all these mercenaries and murderers... no one ever... that is, there was one who tried to hide behind a child, but even he only saved his own skin. Even next to them you are nothing, understand? You are so scared to approach me chained, naked, because I threatened you. And you couldn’t come up with anything better than aping this silly bint in front of me. What you do next? Smother a chicken?”

It would seem that upcoming beating and possible rape my cut off every sense of humor. But no. When a disheveled drunken man with a hefty boner rushes at you, and the boner dangles from side to side with every step, you can simply laugh your head off. Steve laughed after the first blow, which he tried to repel, and after the second, which could not be repelled, because the wounded hand was completely out of order, and after the third, when Khalid took his hair and banged his head against the wall. He laughed when the thug tried to push him into the mattress, hilariously moaning: “Yyyyyy”. Son of a bitch was probably a professional wrestler in hif past life, because he somehow twisted Steve’s hand very painfully. But when Steve was able to release his right hand and push between their legs, it turned out to be a joke of the year. Because it was Khalid’s wrestling skills that got him into trouble. Well, alcohol, too. In wrestling, it is forbidden to grab the opponent by his balls; it’s a dishonest lock, punished by immediate disqualification. But when you try to rape someone, you have to be heavy drunk to expect a honest fight.

It took him to let Khalid inside to gain that four or five inches. But Khalid would not tell anyone. He roared like a wounded elephant, and now the whole crew of this nice ship was running here to his roar. Steve did not care. He was about to blackout, Khalid kept him on the chokehold and squeezed, crushed, shouting "Let go, bitch!" In Russian, but Steve did not let go, he kept squeezing too, and the question of who would weaken first, from suffocation or pain, remained open: until a shot hit Steve’s ears loudly, and Khalid went limp, splashing the mattress with blood and brains.

“I told you: do not dare touch my things,” Madame Hydra’s voice sounded in the same tone as the shot.

Even his brains look miserable, said Bucky, letting go of the steering wheel. Done. We killed him, friend. She just pressed the trigger, we killed.

Steve unclenched his hand and only then he realized that worried wound hurt like hell. He shrugged. The dead man's carcass slid off him and out of him, collapsed to the floor. It seems that at the moment of death this sorry fucker also came. Yes, that was really unappetizing.

Steve did not want to move at all, he was too tired from the struggle and from laughter. But the constrained arm began to numb painfully, and Steve forced himself to shift, turn around and sit on the floor. The cabin was narrow, they both with Khalid were large, so it was impossible to sit on the floor not touching the dead man. Sreve’s legs rested on Khalid’s body.

“He was in love with you,” said Steve to Madame Hydra. “Did you know?”

The woman did not answer. The gunpowder smell, mixtd with the smell of blood and the contents of the intestines, crawled along the cabin. Noura was shaking in the doorway between two guards. Something told Steve that it would be her who would clean up.

Steve shook his head.

“How much trouble because of me.”

He said this to Noura, but Madame Hydra decided that it was said to her.

“Every cloud must have a silver lining. The boat will remain with me.”

 

Everything can be found in open sources. Or almost everything.

A person moves from the cradle to the grave, leaving behind a trail of documents, similar to a wake stream. As with the wake, the problem is that it dissolves into the sea of other documents left by other people.

Ships involved in the scheme, left behind a trace of the documents. The SHIELD, Interpol and special services of three countries were simultaneously walking down this trail. The trail lead to Russia. More precisely, through Russia.

...There are three big centers in the world, from where hard drugs are spreading. The first is the “Golden Triangle”, the remote regions of Indochina, where poppies are grown and raw opium is produced. The second is the “golden crescent”, Iranian-Afghan-Pakistani East Bumblefuck, where they do the same. The third is Colombia and Mexico, but coca is grown there and cocaine is made, this is a separate matter, we are not interested in it now ...

War-ridden Afghanistan produces millions of tons of raw opium and heroin, because there is nothing more to produce there. Through the ports of Pakistan, this heroin is sent around the world, but Pakistan is only one of the routes. The second lies through the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus. Turkmen officials and border guards are bought by narcos, with guts and all the contents, and they are bought cheaply, and on the M-77 highway you can drive goods by wagons to Turkmenbashi City itself, where all the rubbish is reloaded onto ships and goes to Makhachkala or Baku through the Caspian Sea. And then — either through Georgia to Batumi, or through Vladikavkaz to Novorossiysk. No, part of the cargo, and a considerable one, will go to Russia, there are a lot of consumers there, some shit will transit to Scandinavia... but the main stream goes to Europe through the Black and Mediterranean seas, and somewhwere on this stream there were a certain lady, who liked to tint her hair green.

...In Batumi you can’t easily walk if you are a woman. Glances cling around like a cobweb, and you are always followed by an ecstatic clatter of tongues, exclamations and compliments, as well as unsolicited assessments, which Georgians, confident that no one understands Georgian, express without embarrassment. The waiters and bartenders are more professional, they speak strictly on business, but their eyes are more eloquent.

“And this is called “a spy,”Gigla pulled a chair for Natasha. “You collected half the waterfront behind you.”

Natasha smiled. But no one noticed Clint and Wanda, who settled on the veranda. No one, including Gigla.

“The years pass by you, Natasha,” the Georgian serviceman shook his head. “And they do not spare me. Look at that bald head.”

“You have a beautiful skull,” she replied. “And you grow bald bravely. I hate those miserable attempts to mask baldness by combing to the side.”

Gigla laughed, stroking his shaved head.

“Have you tried Adzharian khachapuri?”

“Of course.”

-“You did not try them! Nowhere they bake them as good as here!”

He turned away to call the waiter. Natasha, through the glass, nodded slowly to Clint, who touched Vanda by the hand, the girl got up and entered the pavilion, as if she walked to the toilet.

Passing behind Gigla, she slightly shook her hand. No one noticed a red spark coming off the fingers. And if anyone noticed, he must have decided that it was just a trick of light.

“I am interested in drug traffic through Novorossiysk, Batumi and Poti,” said Natasha. “And in two old passenger ships sold for metal scrap, "George Zhukov" and "Soviet Abkhazia". As well as I am interested in a man named or nicknamed Khalid, possibly a former SHIELD operative.”

And Gigla Tkvirashvili, who never did anything for nothing, suddenly felt a fierce desire to help his fleeting acquaintance Natasha Romanova completely free of charge and as soon as possible.

One day later she knew that Mohammed Gadzhimurtazov, a former athlete, a former FSB officer, a former operative of the Russian branch of SHIELD, who had retired after the great schism, was driving Caucasian narcotraffic. His fourth son from his first marriage, Khalid, officially worked in one of his father’s foreign firms and even had Turkish citizenship.

Gadzhimurtazov had a hotel in Egypt, where he kept a penthouse for himself. Natasha really, really wanted blood, they all wanted... but Gadzhimurtazov needed to be passed into the hands of the authorities alive and unharmed. So, unlike Gigla, who had safely forgotten about meeting with a dizzying Russian spy, he felt the urgent need for repentance the next morning, boarded a private jet, flew to London and surrendered to MI6.

Now Natasha knew at least one, likely fake, but still the name of the woman who captured Rogers: Margareta Gellenhazi. She also knew the underground name: Viper or Madame Hydra.

It was Margareta Gellenhazi who bought the Ellipse vintage perfume at the auction two months ago. She owned shares in the hotel, transport and fuel business. She left behind a trail of documents.

The only problem was that Gadzhimurtazov had no idea of her, or his unlucky son’s whereabouts.

But he had a good memory. One day, he recalled, Margareta invited him to a meeting on a posh three-deck yacht. The yacht was called "Kitanga".

According to “Sea Traffic”, “Kitanga” passed the Philippine Sea and... disappeared somewhere near the island of Miyakojima. Well, that is, simply ceased to give a signal.

“This is not for long,” Natasha reassured the team. “We fly to Japan.”


End file.
